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davidbfpo
07-16-2012, 09:51 AM
Emma Sky is a remarkable lady and The Guardian has an exclusive interview with her (Part One published). She is virtually unknown to the British public and well known to some of the American leadership who served in Iraq.

A very short bio sketch:
was political adviser to America's most senior general in Iraq, and was part of the team that implemented the counterinsurgency strategy that helped to control the civil war that erupted in the country. The appointment of an English woman at the heart of the US military was a bold and unprecedented move, and it gave her unique access and insights into the conduct of one of the most controversial campaigns in modern history.

In all, the Oxford graduate spent more than four years in Iraq, including a spell as civilian governor of one of its most complex regions. She met Tony Blair and Barack Obama in Baghdad and earned the trust of senior Iraqi officials, as well as many of the country's leading politicians and community leaders, some of whom remain her friends.

The haunting, which I have yet to fully absorb:
A lack of understanding of the Arab world also meant the west struggled to grasp why it had provoked so much violence, and who was responsible for it.

"We've been fighting the war on terror for 10 years" said Sky. "At times it seems we have been fighting demons. We behaved as if there were a finite number of people in the world who had to be killed or captured. And we were slow to realise that our actions were creating more enemies.

"It has been seen by many Muslims as a war on Islam. Now, we are saying, 'We've pulled out of Iraq, we are pulling out of Afghanistan, and it's all over now.' It may be over for the politicians. But it is not over for the Muslim world. Well over 100,000 Muslims have been killed since 9/11 following our interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, mostly by other Muslims.

"We have to ask ourselves, what do we think this has done to their world? And how will they avenge these deaths in years to come? It is not over for the soldiers who have physical injuries and mental scars, nor the families who have lost loved ones."

The opening article:http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jul/15/iraq-war-briton-us-military

The longer interview:http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jul/15/iraq-emma-sky-us-military

Fuchs
07-16-2012, 03:12 PM
What's so haunting about it?
It's the most common sense stuff.

Too bad that common sense was not particularly involved in the whole GWOT.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_LE6431ylARU/S5vEMKLlXcI/AAAAAAAAAKE/ODF8N9Rejts/s1600/common_sense_god_damn_super_power12.jpg

MikeF
07-16-2012, 06:08 PM
Friends,

I wanted to share this recent series of Guardian interviews with Dr. Emma Sky questioning the impact of the Long War on both the troops and the effected populace. Emma, along with Dr. Nancy Roberts, Dr. Anna Simons,and Dr. Jill Hazelton served as waypoints to me as I navigated the storms of the last ten years, and I am grateful for their time and mentoring.

Looking past strategy, these women are trying to understand what happens when a sole superpower violates the Clausewitzian trinity.

In the first (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jul/16/briton-advised-us-iraq-tactics), she succinctly describes how the professional military deliberately ignores emotional intelligence through indoctrination and training in order to allow the soldier to survive combat.



“There was so much violence that it was almost too big to comprehend. The military has a language that is not accidental; it is used to quarantine emotion.”


This quarantine, or so-called compartmentalization, over extended deployments, will lead professional soldiers towards a breaking point of PTSD if they cannot find alternative means (family, friends, and socio-economic structures) to process the deliberate bifurcation of emotions (hearts) and actions/thoughts (minds). Coupled with repeated concussions or traumatic brain injury (TBI) from repeated or spectacular blast, this brain damage can become debilitating, a nascent insurgency brewing within one's own mind. The body is a closed, organic system which is not equipped to split the heart from the mind. Rather, it brings to mind wasted valor.


In the second (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jul/15/iraq-war-briton-us-military?intcmp=239), Emma describes the prolonged effects of extended intervention,


“We've been fighting the war on terror for 10 years" said Sky. "At times it seems we have been fighting demons. We behaved as if there were a finite number of people in the world who had to be killed or captured. And we were slow to realise that our actions were creating more enemies.

"It has been seen by many Muslims as a war on Islam. Now, we are saying, 'We've pulled out of Iraq, we are pulling out of Afghanistan, and it's all over now.' It may be over for the politicians. But it is not over for the Muslim world. Well over 100,000 Muslims have been killed since 9/11 following our interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, mostly by other Muslims.

"We have to ask ourselves, what do we think this has done to their world? And how will they avenge these deaths in years to come? It is not over for the soldiers who have physical injuries and mental scars, nor the families who have lost loved ones."

She added: "The world is better off without Saddam. But nobody has been held accountable for what happened in Iraq, and there is a danger that we won't learn the right lessons, particularly related to the limitations of our power.”

Emma shows shades of The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest. What she warns seems warrant to immerse into fiction if not boiled and embroiled by the facts of the day. Emma espouses my own worst fears, and I am left wondering how to unmuddle a way out of this wicked web of problems.

Best

Mike

Steve the Planner
07-17-2012, 03:55 AM
Mike:

The brutality of Iraq for the twenty years before 2003 was unprecedented, systematic, institutionalized, long before we came along...

The idea that we missed in our Light Brigade mission was that there was a deep inherent problem---we told our military to go and kick that particular Hornet's Nest but without prep, resourcing or accurate PROBLEM DEFINITION, that just let all the demons fly, and created many of our own.

Back to my original premise: Planning for War has to begin with Planning for Peace (the rough and tumble end state), and then to create a credible path to that.

Dumbass civilian planner that I am, I know that had we, in transition, have become a real partner with Iraq's existing ministries (for better or worse with Baathists or not) for things like Water, Infrastructure, Food, etc....we would still be welcome and much needed partners, have all the eyes on Iraq we we ever needed, and the opportunity for a less inflammatory occupation period, existed.

What military or intel group has ever modeled those kinds of alternatives? (A quick and nasty take-out-the -baddest-guys and tinker within existing remnants.)

Now, as she says. We are out, and where do we go from here?

Dayuhan
07-17-2012, 04:30 AM
A couple of comments stood out for me. One was this:


there is a danger that we won't learn the right lessons, particularly related to the limitations of our power.

That danger seems very real to me, and in that sense it might be a good thing if the specters of Iraq and Afghanistan haunt us for a good while. If the haunting reminds us that while force can remove a government, it cannot make a new one or build a nation, it will at least serve some purpose.

I also noted this:


"We think it is about us, and it is about our security. But in the end, it is about their politics … success in Iraq was always going to be defined by politics. We needed a political solution, a pact, a peace."

and I couldn't help noting the "we". Yes, we needed a peace. Arguably the Iraqis needed or need the same. You could say the same about the Afghans. That doesn't mean a pact or a peace will come any time soon, or that we can make one happen. IMO, of course... but realistically, when external force removes a government, there's a power vacuum. That vacuum is filled by the removing power, or local powers will fight to fill it themselves. The ideal solution, for us or for the people, might be a peaceful agreement between all of those parties. Whether or not we can bring that ideal solution to pass is another question altogether, one that must be realistically assessed before we decide to create the vacuum in the first place.

TheCurmudgeon
07-17-2012, 11:59 AM
I am not saying we didn't hose this up. No one could defend that position.

Sky admits the CPA simply could not meet these expectations and no amount of hard work from many experienced British and American volunteers could make up for the lack of planning before the invasion. It left the CPA – which was assembled in haste and from scratch – attempting to restore public services, disband the security forces and build new ones, as well as introduce a free market and democracy.
'No organisation would have been able to implement such an agenda, particularly without the consent of the population'.

But she came in with a specific expectation and agenda and discovered that things were not what they seemed.


I had arrived ready to apologise to every Iraqi for the war. Instead I had listened to a litany of suffering and pain under Saddam for which I was quite unprepared. The mass graves, the details of torture, the bureaucratisation of abuse. The pure banality of evil...

She makes a number of valid points that I can agree with, and I give her credit for going out and doing something rather than sitting at home and complaining about it, but I think she is looking at things through the lens of her own "private boarding school" upbringing. She assumes that we could talk this all out. As others have pointed out, even internally initiated nation building and transitions are messy things. If the Iraqi people had done this on their own does she really believe that the Sunnis would have been treated better?


Retribution is the new law of the land in Libya. Summary executions, arbitrary arrests, torture and indefinite detention have emerged while the judicial system remains in a state of paralysis.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/middleeast/la-fg-libya-retribution-20120607,0,4794359.story

Guess I find it all a bit self righteous.

Steve the Planner
07-17-2012, 05:49 PM
Curmudgeon:

The immortal and heartfelt words of Jack Nicholas in Mars Attacks: "Can't we all just----get along?"

As Dahyan says: Who is the WE?

Steve

slapout9
07-17-2012, 06:01 PM
What military or intel group has ever modeled those kinds of alternatives? (A quick and nasty take-out-the -baddest-guys and tinker within existing remnants.)



Believe it or not the Air Force has and they have proposed that concept since the 1950's starting with "Project Control" but because it was an AF idea people don't pay much attention to it.

Steve the Planner
07-17-2012, 11:21 PM
Slap:

Right. The pathways are there but they never meet in the operational plan.

The one thing myself and other keep coming to is: How to engage the actual people that are the focus of all of this.

As a civilian planner, the first thing you learn in a well-implemented community engagement process is that planners define the issues and rough-out options and CHOICES.

Then you go to the intended audience who invariably adds either nuances you missed or wholesale changes (different problem definitions, different solutions), after which, you start again.

This nasty business of community engagement---confounded in blood conflict (instead of just general community conflicts)---is just DAMNED hard, yet will never stick from some ferner telling locals what to do.

We cannot be both the occupier and fill the shoes of the occupied. If they have problems, they must find solutions to them.

Rule 101 in disaster relief---help where you can, then engage the community to rebuild itself. It can not work any other way.

Steve

Dayuhan
07-18-2012, 12:12 AM
Guess I find it all a bit self righteous.

Post-mortem introspection often is, and I can forgive that.


The one thing myself and other keep coming to is: How to engage the actual people that are the focus of all of this.

What I keep coming to is the need to accept that engaging actual people becomes extraordinarily difficult when the engagement begins with you invading and conquering their country. It makes an already difficult process infinitely more difficult.

I don't doubt that poor planning for the aftermath of invasion was a major cause of the disarray and the generally unsatisfactory results. The danger in focusing on that, of course, ist that we might easily reach the conclusion that if we just plan a bit better, we could pull off regime change without a disorderly aftermath. I'm not convinced that we can do that, or that we should be trying.

Steve the Planner
07-18-2012, 02:01 AM
Dahuyan:

Agree with the BIG insight: Planning better was not the problem, nor the route to the "if only we would have...." solution.

First, planning better should have materially changed the task/mission.

Second, as you say, the occupying power can not be the occupied, nor create the legitimacy to or of them. No matter how many cups of tea or soup eaten with knives.

The occupier has to find its legitimate role and stay within that. Huge pressure, huge influence is OK, but the outcomes of that can not become the local solution---just the occupier's quick hit.

Sustainable solutions have to emerge from and be rooted in them, not us.

Finding a different path AFTER you went down a road is very very tricky.

Like most on this site, we were not involved in the big decision---just what followed---and doing the best with what was in front of us.

Maybe, with Ken's wisdom, it has and always will be that way, but the question that Emma Sky leaves behind: What next? is still unanswered.

Personally, as ugly as it may look: Iraq is doing what I expected---finding its sea legs in a very tough circumstance---but with some good fortune (a short boom in oil prices).

Afghanistan, on the other hand: Boy, I hope some decent transition planning starts soon.

Ken White
07-18-2012, 03:40 AM
Howsomeever, this ol' dumb Ken has always contended that it'd be the halfway point -- 2018 -- before any real degree of stability was shown and the the full 30 years to 2033 before Iraq was a functioning semi-rule of law State in accordance with world -- not Western; definitely not Western, not ever -- norms. That to be true only if there was no major disruption in the ME in the interim. I said that in 2003 and little I've seen or heard since has caused me to change my mind. Nor do I at this time see any major flaps in the ME, just a slew of minor ones... :wry:

They're nervous over there -- and they should be; they have to fix that. We cannot.

FWIW I disagree with Professor Sky. Iraq will not "haunt" us; the world will move on and lurch to another crisis. 'It' -- the lurching factor -- has indeed always been this way and always will. The Perfesser is a smart Lady but she's young and reading about doesn't give all the subtleties that living with a spasmodically improving world does. Nor does it show well the resilience of humans...

Steve the Planner
07-18-2012, 03:58 AM
Ken:

Used to hear folks talking about the books they were gonna write about Iraq when it was over. Always wondered who they were going to sell these books to. Iraqis---the real target audience---would have no interest in them.

Dumb american ideas about their country.

The 30 year horizon. Lifetimes, generation spanning. Real life. Open-ended. Self-defining and re-defining. Who knows where its is headed, or how it will get there.

Just doesn't fit in to our operational efforts.

Like dwelling on Huntington's CORDs critique (which has a lot of substance and reference), but gets in the way of "Don't Just Stand There, Do Something."

slapout9
07-18-2012, 04:43 AM
It's well know in the upper circles of power that after the next election Ken will ask Iran to give up their Nuclear weapons program......they will comply!:wry:

slapout9
07-18-2012, 04:50 AM
We cannot be both the occupier and fill the shoes of the occupied. If they have problems, they must find solutions to them.



That is exactly what the Air Force believes or at they used to. I have a copy of a letter to the editor of our local paper from just after the overthrow of Sadam where Colonel Warden tried to warn whoever would listen what would happen if we disbanded the Iraqi military and implemented some kind of de-bathistazation(spelling?) program. Pretty much fell on deaf ears.

Dayuhan
07-18-2012, 08:04 AM
FWIW I disagree with Professor Sky. Iraq will not "haunt" us; the world will move on and lurch to another crisis. 'It' -- the lurching factor -- has indeed always been this way and always will. The Perfesser is a smart Lady but she's young and reading about doesn't give all the subtleties that living with a spasmodically improving world does. Nor does it show well the resilience of humans...

I think she's correct in the sense that the Iraq war and the memories of it (memories that may or may not be accurate, on all sides) will have an influence on our relations with the Middle East and the Muslim world for a long time to come, just as our Cold War legacy of installing and/or propping up dictators we perceived to be anti-Communist still complicates our relationships with much of the developing world. Whether or not we will recognize the influence or its antecedents is of course another question.


Used to hear folks talking about the books they were gonna write about Iraq when it was over. Always wondered who they were going to sell these books to.

Other Americans, of course.


That is exactly what the Air Force believes or at they used to. I have a copy of a letter to the editor of our local paper from just after the overthrow of Sadam where Colonel Warden tried to warn whoever would listen what would happen if we disbanded the Iraqi military and implemented some kind of de-bathistazation(spelling?) program. Pretty much fell on deaf ears.

Were those ears deaf, or were they also considering what could happen if we didn't disband the army or get rid of the Baath? It's easy to look back and say that was a mistake, but we don't know that the road not taken would have led anyplace better. How do you think the Shi'a and the Kurds might have reacted if we'd proposed to keep the army intact and the Baath in power? I'd guess they'd have been pissed, to put it mildly.

slapout9
07-18-2012, 08:48 AM
Were those ears deaf, or were they also considering what could happen if we didn't disband the army or get rid of the Baath? It's easy to look back and say that was a mistake, but we don't know that the road not taken would have led anyplace better. How do you think the Shi'a and the Kurds might have reacted if we'd proposed to keep the army intact and the Baath in power? I'd guess they'd have been pissed, to put it mildly.

Except he said it would be a mistake BEFORE not after. I don't care what the Shi'a or Kurds think that isn't Americas problem.

Dayuhan
07-18-2012, 10:11 AM
Except he said it would be a mistake BEFORE not after. I don't care what the Shi'a or Kurds think that isn't Americas problem.

I said going there would be a mistake, before not after.

What the Sunni thought became our problem when they started shooting at us and planting IEDs. What the Kurds and the Sunni thought would presumably have become an issue under similar circumstances. Of course we could have left the army intact, put some more or less congenial general in charge, and walked away to watch the ensuing civil war from a distance, but that would have raised a whole range of issues of its own, all of which would likely have become our problems sooner rather than later.

TheCurmudgeon
07-18-2012, 11:32 AM
What I keep coming to is the need to accept that engaging actual people becomes extraordinarily difficult when the engagement begins with you invading and conquering their country. It makes an already difficult process infinitely more difficult.


As a general rule I would agree. In the case of Iraq I disagree. By using the term "their country" you assume the population has an interest in seeing the current regime continue. That they are vested in it. That they find it legitimate. I don't believe that was the case prior to the invasion in Iraq. I believe that the majority of the population wanted Saddam and his sons out of the picture. I believe that manifest itself in the relative good will we have in the three to four months after the invasion.

We hosed it up, but not because of the decision to invade. It was the decisions on how to handle it afterwords that screwed us. In my opinion to walk away from this believing that the right lesson to learn from Iraq is that it is better to just sit on the sidelines and do nothing would be misreading the autopsy.

Bob's World
07-18-2012, 11:56 AM
Come on, just because the people don't have a say in their governance, it does not mean it is not "their country." That is a dangerous bit of rationalization.

"We had to destroy the country to safe the country" Right? This is an easy trap to fall into, and we are better served by admitting that we did than we are by rationalizing away our most important lessons that we should be learning from this.

There is a WIDE range of options between "sit on the sidelines and do nothing" and "Invade and occupy."

One such option was the UW concept put on the table early to simply go in and leverage the Kurdish separatist movement. No one wanted one more SF-centric quick success though. We (DOD) were looking for a big gunfight that everyone could play in; and the Whitehouse was looking for an option that took out Saddam once and for all - and that is what we got. Now, what did we learn from that?

All the lessons learned I am seeing being captured are about how to do the wrong thing better. It is time we start putting a bit more wattage into thinking about how we could have done better things.

Steve the Planner
07-18-2012, 12:56 PM
Bob:

Right across the Board.

Options: Take out Saddam and his main deck of cards, and you are actually left with a mixed army including Kurds.

Kurds, however, were only one possible leverage point. Shia opposition? Internal Sunni dissent? Pressure through those that influence various parties in Iraq?

I, for one, believe that the attacks on Kurds and Shia were so virulent that absent us "Doing Something" Iran (and other neighbors) would have been drawn into that fight, and that a regional conflict was an important unrecognized consideration. The flip side of that is that these regional players were also leverage points.

I know, how stupid. Back Saddam to attack Iran, than spur Iran to attack Iraq.

Back to Dayuhan's point about what exactlyis our legacy in the ME. Divide and conquer? Play all sides against the middle? Whatever.

Lots of options, all of which evaporated once we went in.

Dayuhan
07-18-2012, 01:14 PM
Back to Dayuhan's point about what exactlyis our legacy in the ME. Divide and conquer? Play all sides against the middle? Whatever.

"Our legacy in the ME" is a work in progress, and I wouldn't want to venture a guess on what it will eventually be. My point was that the specific legacy of the Iraq war and local perceptions of that war are likely to be irritants and stumbling blocks for some time.

TheCurmudgeon
07-18-2012, 01:51 PM
Come on, just because the people don't have a say in their governance, it does not mean it is not "their country." That is a dangerous bit of rationalization. You are misreading what I wrote. I was responding to Dayuhun's assertion that engaging the people becomes extraordinarily difficult when the engagement begins with you invading and conquering their country. I would argue that how difficult engaging the people is situation dependent. We had no problems working with the French after Normandy. Each case has to be looked at as a unique situation.


"We had to destroy the country to safe the country" Right? This is an easy trap to fall into, and we are better served by admitting that we did than we are by rationalizing away our most important lessons that we should be learning from this.No, not saying that.


There is a WIDE range of options between "sit on the sidelines and do nothing" and "Invade and occupy." This is EXACTLY what I am saying (although, apparently very ineptly). There is a continuum between the two extremes and each situation has to be examined to determine what, if anything can be done. Then once those options are fleshed out determine what, if anything should be done, based on our interests.



All the lessons learned I am seeing being captured are about how to do the wrong thing better. It is time we start putting a bit more wattage into thinking about how we could have done better things.Agree, but we will never go there if our answer is "We should never do this again". That is the kind of cookie cutter solution I take issue with. That was the point of my comment.

I am not saying that "invade and occupy" was the right solution. But I will not concede that "invade and occupy" is the primary reason we are where we are in Iraq today. We did not need to apologize to every Iraqi for invading. We did need to have had a better plan for how we were going to occupy and how the transition was going to occur. It needed to take into account the various religious, ethnic, and economic variations and historical animosities. We could have split the country up into three separate nations rather than try to compound a mistake made when the lines were drawn by the British. We could have not engaged in DeBathification. Who knows if any of these would have worked better. But I do believe that we can learn from mistakes made after the invasion rather than see the invasion as the primary error and therefore dismiss everything that occured after as the natural cascade of events that occur as the result of that mistake.

Steve the Planner
07-18-2012, 08:16 PM
Ciurmudgeon:

Thanks to Joel Wing (Musings on Iraq), I was just re-reading his re-pubs of the SIGIR stuff on the planning for war part of Iraq. Everyone had a different picture, some had facts (that got left on the floor), some had Expat "opinions."

Reality, as we should have known, is that the entire Infrastructure and Public Systems of Iraq could be knocked over with a feather. Weapons of mass destructions? C'mon, they could hardly make a public food delivery, across a functioning bridge to a store with lights and power.

There were just so many options open under these systems level scenarios without even going down the road of mining dissidents and internal opposition.

The Kurds swept down on March 19, 2003 virtually un-opposed---ie, there were many "parts" of Iraq that could have been "liberated" leaving others to die on the vine.

How do you get revenue to Baghdad/Saddam, if the oild flows from Diyala to Basra, where those two areas are not under Saddam's control. Either he defends the Capital from Sadr, or he defends the oil revenue at threat from further erosion.

Just one dumb little thread that should have been abundantly obvious.

So many different options to play out. Water under the damn....

davidbfpo
03-12-2013, 11:23 AM
As the tenth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq looms the UK press has had a series of articles, mainly historical and once more Emma Sky writes an article:http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/11/iraq-war-lessons-intervention


Lesson one: interventions require legitimacy

Lesson two: interventions need to have limited, clear and realistic goals – and be well resourced

Lesson three: the collapse of the state leads to communal violence

Lesson four: an inclusive elite agreement is critical to gain widespread support for the new order

Lesson five: elections do not necessarily bestow legitimacy on the new order

Lesson six: interventions inevitably have unintended consequences

Almost tempted to use this as a check-list for Mali.

davidbfpo
04-15-2015, 09:50 PM
Emma Sky, a British civilian political adviser, who served in Iraq 2003-2013, has finally written her book and it is due out next week. At one point she was regularly seen alongside General Odierno, a slight woman beside a man somewhat larger.

The book has three five star pre-publication reviews on Amazon:http://www.amazon.com/The-Unraveling-Hopes-Missed-Opportunities/dp/161039593X/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top?ie=UTF8

The UK version:http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Unraveling-Hopes-Missed-Opportunities/dp/161039593X

Next month at London's Frontline Club she is speaking and withina few days a podcast is usually uploaded onto the website (I am going so will add an update):http://www.frontlineclub.com/in-conversation-with-emma-sky-iraq-the-unravelling/

TheCurmudgeon
04-15-2015, 10:45 PM
Just ordered it. Should be interesting.

davidbfpo
04-18-2015, 12:17 PM
A short Slate article by Emma Sky 'How Obama Abandoned Iraq: Why the rise of ISIS and the fall of Iraq weren’t inevitable':http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2015/04/emma_sky_on_america_s_failure_in_iraq_the_rise_of_ isis_and_the_fall_of_iraq.single.html

She ends with:
But what happened in Iraq matters terribly to Iraqis who hoped so much for a better future—and to those of us who served there year after year. If we refuse to honestly examine what took place there, we will miss the opportunity to better understand when and how to respond to the world’s instability.

Bill Moore
04-18-2015, 01:44 PM
Like others who commented on her previous writings, she is often half-right, but she can be a simplistic at times.


I had learned that violence was an extension of politics, that hatreds in this land were new not ancient, that alliances could be forged and fractured, and that friendships counted for more than flags.

This reminds me of Wolfawitz telling Congress before the war that there were was no ethnic hatred in Iraq because he saw Sunnis and Shia married to each other in Baghdad when he visited (when we were supporting Iraq with their fight against Iran). A half truth that created a perception that the regime change would be easier than more level headed people predicted. Sunnis and Shia were openly married under the protection of an oppressive government that was probably one of the most secular in the Middle East at the time. Hatred existed, but it was suppressed.

My engagements with Shia and Kurds that were influential and fairly high up would tell me in confidence that the only answer for Iraq was to have a strong Sunni in charge to keep the country together. They didn't want another mad man like Saddam, but they realized their society needed a strong, largely secular leader to suppress the religious/ethnic passions of the Shia and Kurds.

There was a long history of ethnic and religious conflict in Iraq, so while she is right that the current level and character of that hatred is new, hatred in that area is far from new. It is the ability to act on that hatred, to mobilized forces, and the rapid escalation in the conflict leading to greater hatred (because the government is part of the problem, not the solution) that is new.

As for her point that alliances could be forged and fractured, I agree, but hasn't that been true throughout history? I'm don't understand her next point that friendships counted for more than flags. If she is implying you that friendships can be formed between various individual actors below the group noise, that is true, but in what way does that count more than flags? Not clear of her intent here.

davidbfpo
05-13-2015, 10:49 PM
Octavia Manea strikes again:http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/the-accidental-counterinsurgent

davidbfpo
05-21-2015, 11:52 AM
I attended last night's Q&A with Emma Sky @ The Frontline Club, London and there is 84 mins long video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_NACJsTl9A

Her explanation of how she found her own post @ Kirkuk (a place she did not know), as a provincial government coordinator; with no briefing from the UK FCO beforehand is simply bizarre and she explains her personal mission was to say sorry for the invasion. Later she became a political adviser to a US brigade commander and much later to General Odierno. In total she spent 50 months in country, with several long breaks - usually sabbaticals at universities.

I found some of her answers to the main questioner and in the Q&A session very terse. A couple of Iraqis in the audience, now in exile, made comments.

She identified an ex-Iraqi AF general and several UK military officers in the audience, one of whom was decidedly unimpressed, MG Lamb.

Anyway worth listening to.

JWing
06-15-2015, 03:32 PM
Just published an interview with Emma Sky. We discussed her time in Iraq working for the CPA, during the Surge and afterward during the withdrawal. Also tried to evaluate how the U.S. did intervening in and trying to rebuild Iraq. Here's a link (http://musingsoniraq.blogspot.com/2015/06/how-did-unites-states-do-iraq-interview.html).

davidbfpo
06-16-2015, 08:30 AM
Just published an interview with Emma Sky. We discussed her time in Iraq working for the CPA, during the Surge and afterward during the withdrawal. Also tried to evaluate how the U.S. did intervening in and trying to rebuild Iraq. Here's a link (http://musingsoniraq.blogspot.com/2015/06/how-did-unites-states-do-iraq-interview.html).

Joel,

Congratulations on the interview, Emma Sky for you gave far clearer answers than she did when I listened to her. I have copied your post to the Emma Sky thread.

davidbfpo
06-23-2015, 01:48 PM
An excerpt from Emma Sky's book entitled 'A tip from the bad ass: don’t have friends' and sub-titled 'The blunt, foul-mouthed British general whose job was to ‘turn’ insurgents in Iraq baffled Americans with his bizarre expressions, but Emma Sky watched as he won his allies over by strength of personality'. Who is this? General Graeme Lamb, the British deputy commander of coalition forces in Iraq 2006-7.


General Graeme Lamb, the British deputy commander of coalition forces in Iraq 2006-7, was given the task of exploring outreach to insurgents. This was not an easy matter as it meant dealing with people who had killed our soldiers.
But “Lambo”, as he was known to all, had served as commander of the SAS and with his experiences in Northern Ireland and elsewhere he could not be accused of being soft on terrorists.
To those senior officers who said we should not deal with people who had blood on their hands, Lambo pointed out that he and others had very bloody hands.
There was only one General Lamb — and he was like no other. He would never have survived in the US military culture of political correctness. His emails were usually a stream of consciousness.
He frequently sent me words of advice: “Take a tip from the head of the bad ass and resident president of the bunch of bastards club — do not have friends. PS: you’re doing alright for a bird.”
Every six weeks Lambo announced he was heading back to the UK to “spank the wife”. General Ray Odierno, Lambo’s boss and mine, shook his head. He, like all US military, was permitted just a week off in a 15-month tour.
Strutting around, sleeves rolled up, swearing, Lambo looked and behaved like a thug. But it was all theatre, all an act, to make the Americans confront the need to change their approach and to take calculated risks. By the sheer strength of his personality, Graeme Lamb won over others to his ideas.
Lambo used his official residence at Maude House in the Baghdad Green Zone to convene discussions on how to get insurgents to stop fighting. He always included me. He had few staff of his own, needed allies and sensed that I could be a useful one. At one of these dinners I explained to Lambo that General O, who was seated between us, had encouraged his soldiers not to live like pigs, which made me feel guilty as I was untidy.
Lambo asked: “Have you heard my pig story?” I hadn’t, I admitted. “There I was on the eve of battle in 2003,” he said, “talking to the boys. I gave a rip-roaring address and ended with: never forget, the faint-hearted have never f***** a pig.”
General O looked at Lambo, then at me. I shrugged my shoulders. What could I possibly say?
Lambo appeared in General O’s office one day with his small team. He sketched out a diagram on a whiteboard, referring to a “squeeze box”, “pipe-swingers” and “wedges”. No one had a clue what he meant. When he lost his train of thought, Lambo would repeat “f***, f***, f***” as if he had Tourette’s syndrome until he remembered what he wanted to say.
He responded to General O’s questions with anecdotes that went off in all directions and left us more perplexed than when he had started. But the need to separate those who were prepared to stop using violence from those we deemed “irreconcilables” resonated. The question was how to do it.
Lambo had a range of ideas. One involved releasing insurgents from our detention camps if they agreed to try to persuade members of their group to stop attacking us. This approach was obviously fraught with risk. How was it possible to assess whether we had genuinely “turned” these insurgents?
General O was sceptical about releasing captured insurgents who had killed Americans, fearing it would only lead to the deaths of more US soldiers. He was also concerned that it would be perceived by soldiers as a “catch and release” programme, hence providing greater incentives for the US troops to kill rather than to detain.
I worked with Lambo and his staff to help them understand General O’s concerns and urged them to integrate their work within the main effort, rather than keeping it as a separate British initiative.
“This work at the moment appears to be a Lambo one-man show,” I warned. “It needs to be brought into the fold. And it must not be seen as a Brit thing (remove the Union Jack flag on the cover!) if it is to gain traction.”
Lambo responded: “Emma, How could you possibly suggest that we haul down the Union Flag — my dear girl we do not do that sort of thing. You have obviously spent too long in the company of Americans, but since I know how sensitive the female sex is to any ‘upset’ messages, we will in this case condescend and remove the offending symbol which we should not forget flew over an Empire on which the sun never set etc, etc.”
I wrote back: “General Lamb. I know it may be hard for you to come to terms with, but Great Britain lost Her Empire (as well as the Great) some years ago. These days we have to be more skilled and subtle, and rule indirectly through our cousins. We should therefore embrace the Stars and Stripes as our own.”
Once we were close to consensus, Lambo convened a session in Maude House with the top US generals. At dinner he seated General Stan McChrystal opposite me. It was the first time I had had a proper conversation with McChrystal, who was in charge of special forces in Iraq. I was impressed by how thoughtful, liberal and well read he was — for someone who specialised in hunting down humans.
He spoke to me about the effect of counterterrorism operations on those who prosecute them. He asked how I could participate in the work in Iraq if I did not believe in the whole premise of the global war on terror, the GWOT. I told him I could have remained an armchair critic in the UK. But I had chosen to be here on the ground trying to shape our approach. I recognised that working with the military was changing me. But if I wanted to influence others, I had to be prepared to change my own ideas.
On St Patrick’s Day, Lambo again invited us over to Maude House. We sat in the garden drinking tea while the bagpipes played in the background. General O lounged in a chair, smoking a cigar. Lambo reflected on his outreach to the Sadrists. It was not going well, he told us. “Skinny has been whacked and the Sadr City mayor wounded. (Lambo could not pronounce Arabic names easily so had given nicknames to the people he worked with.) He complained that he was short-staffed: “I only have five blokes and a bird doing all this ####.”
“One bird,” I reminded him, “is worth 10 blokes.”
Tony Blair paid his farewell visit to Iraq in mid-May. Lambo invited me over to Maude House to be part of a small group to meet him. “I will have my tomatoes ready to throw,” I said.
“And I have warned the guards to shoot you on sight and claim that you had a shifty look,” Lambo responded.
The British embassy was rocketed in the morning, minutes before Blair arrived — he was running 10 minutes late. Two vehicles were destroyed. At Maude House I stood in line waiting my turn. Lambo introduced me, saying I was a star and that I looked after the Big Man. There was no mistaking who the Big Man was as he was standing right there.
General O explained that I had been working with the US military since 2003. General David Petraeus, the overall commander, came forward and told Blair that I was “a national treasure”.
At this stage Blair got confused. “Are you British?” he asked. I assured him that I was British born and bred. “What are you doing working with the American military?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “Stockholm syndrome,” I offered.
At that moment the sirens went off. “Incoming. Incoming. Take cover,” boomed the big voice. Everyone moved away from the windows. Blair’s security team took him off to the safe room. “Stay under cover.”
We heard a thud — the rocket landed close by. The “enemy” was fully aware of Blair’s itinerary. We found out how when Jalal Talabani, the Kurdish leader who was now president of Iraq, phoned to apologise that he might have made a mistake in informing the Iranian ambassador about Blair’s visit. So in my one and only interaction with Blair I never did get to have a discussion with him about the decision to go to war.
Lambo left Iraq in style. At the battle update assessment, which was held daily at 7.30am in the large auditorium of the joint operations command and was attended by row after row of staff and liaison officers from multinational corps Iraq, he stood up on a chair and removed his shirt, revealing his muscular and incredibly hirsute torso.
It was not immediately clear that he was trying to show off the Texan belt buckle General O had given him as a farewell gift. He ended by saying, “One Team!”, flicked the finger at us all and strode out of the room.

davidbfpo
10-25-2015, 05:50 PM
A new article by Emma Sky, id'd by a "lurker" and her penultimate paragraph is:
Despite its faults, the Army does at least try to learn and improve, to understand the utility of force and its own limitations. I think of Odierno and Ciotola: friendships formed on the battlefield through sweat and tears, and loss and loss and loss, in an effort to give Iraqis the hope of a better future—the only purpose that made any sense as to why we were there.
Despite its faults, the Army does at least try to learn and improve, to understand the utility of force and its own limitations. I think of Odierno and Ciotola: friendships formed on the battlefield through sweat and tears, and loss and loss and loss, in an effort to give Iraqis the hope of a better future—the only purpose that made any sense as to why we were there. - See more at: http://www.armymagazine.org/2015/10/19/looking-back-on-iraq-so-we-can-move-ahead/#sthash.4tNGf7Pz.dpuf

Link:http://www.armymagazine.org/2015/10/19/looking-back-on-iraq-so-we-can-move-ahead/

AdamG
10-28-2015, 09:16 PM
More suited to this Iraq thread than the other Iraq thread.


Five other service members have been “wounded in action” since the U.S. first sent troops back into Iraq last year, according to statistics from the Pentagon and interviews with officials in Iraq (PDF). But how and when they were injured, the Pentagon refuses to say.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/10/27/the-u-s-war-casualties-the-pentagon-doesn-t-want-you-to-see.html?source=TDB&via=FB_Page