Schmedlap's post is a good one because
it allows us to consider how IEDs (and other like conditions) effect all 3 levels of war. It also allows us to consider that the enemy must also overcome chaos and friction, often suffering directly and indirectly from actions occurring elsewhere as well as creating conditions which afford us opportunities provided we can recognize their significance and capitalize on them. This is not to say that this was a coordinated effort where task and purpose nested nicely with operational objectives and strategic ends - few planned things ever work out so well because the future is unpredictable and the attraction of linearizing things after they happen is strong; however the effort to make the linkages and take full advantage of them should not be understated - it is the art of recognizing potential, arranging resources and exploiting possibilities. It provides a model that military CDRs and planners along with policy makers and their advisers should consider when contemplating complex problems.
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There is another way to stop IEDs - used successfully in OIF III: make the cost of emplacing them prohibitively high. I'll err on the side of OPSEC and omit the city and nitty-gritty details, but the basic gist of it is that we flooded the city with small teams whose sole purpose in life was to observe, report, and kill anyone emplacing an IED.
Overwatches/Ambushes along with patrolling and a QRF built on an understanding of the enemy through good reporting, debriefs and small unit AARs are good tactics - the enemy is more vulnerable here and for him to have an effect he must come to where he will find his enemy. This hits the enemy at the tactical level, but can also disrupt his operational goals - an example would be his attempting to increase OPTEMPO in an outlying city in order to get us to shift forces out of the capital or to try and operationally fix forces required in the capital.
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The going rate for digging in an IED went from $25 to over $500 because the imminent threat of death resulting from IED emplacement become so apparent to the populace.
Depending on the flexibility of funding ascribed to a group or cell - raising the price of IED emplacement or the activity which supports it (dropping of supplies, recon, digging a hole, etc.) drains operational funds which might go to other activities such as material procurement, paying of government officials and informants, recruiting new members, training, movement, housing and food, etc. If this is a small group it may force them into criminal activity or some other activity which de-legitmizes them, slows their OPTEMPO, causes cell friction, or causes them to get sloppy and killed for example. If it is a part of a larger group it may drain funds from elsewhere disrupting those operations, force communications which allow us to understand and target them, and sew discord which exacerbates existing problems. Combined with other Lines of Effort which offer choices to those who supported IED networks - could be becoming an informant, could be a new line of work - the cost/value equation takes on a new perspective. For the politically committed this may be something to be waited out, but their network requires a certain amount of environmental facilitation - as that dries up, its harder for them to operate.
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Now, this is not a strategy to defeat our enemies, but it was an approach that stopped IEDs and enabled us to get the IA and IP into the city with their unarmored vehicles with a greatly diminished threat of them incurring mass casualties.
Enabling the Host Nation security forces to operate in an environment where the enemy has been deprived of a tactic and weapon which afforded him an advantage has multiple benefits - it increases the amount of forces available to secure the populace and deny the enemy physical and moral freedom of movement, maximizes the natural advantages obtained by being a security force that is representative of the culture it operates in, and its often the first physical representation of the government which can lead to establishing legitimacy. Once the HN SecFor has established itself, US/CF assets/resources/units can be redistributed or redeployed -This is an exponential increase - and is a solid linkage to the operational and strategic levels of war through tactical operations.
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The necessary condition was not for the US forces and Anbar tribes to stop fighting one another. The necessary condition was to convince the Anbar tribes to drive al-Qaeda in Iraq out of the province.
This is changing the nature of the political objectives/conversation by some of the belligerents through recognition of shift in conditions. In the captured letter between AQ leadership and AQIZ leadership great concern was expressed about the wanton carnage and tactics employed by AQIZ against Iraqis - it was recognized by AQ as jeopardizing the political objectives they were after - in fact the letter recommended that AQ expend more effort in its political operations then its military ones. There have been documented horrors as well as violations of familial and tribal honors which may have occurred partly as a result of impatience, frustration and stresses as AQIZ's vision of the battlefield failed to be realized - partly through tactical and operation successes by US, CF and ISF - which were partly enabled through freedom of movement - which means mitigating the effects of IEDs along MSRs and ASRs. This probably had some effect on how the Anbar Sheiks viewed the evolution of their political objectives from one where they were more aligned with the interests of AQIZ, to one where they were more aligned with us (and the HN).
All of these things combined create and compound operational problems for insurgents that flow in both directions, gain momentum at various points and can create new opportunities for us and the HN to be exploited.
Danger - this is not to say that the lines are clearly drawn - I don't think we can do that given the infinite variables that may have been introduced - but I do believe them related enough to use for considering the complex social conditions that occur in war and which IEDs represent.
Even though events unfolded as they did, there was no guarantee that they would -its more like we assembled the various pieces with some common frame of reference (and we're not done yet) - so policies which might create the conditions cannot guarantee the desired outcome - just because we'd like to imagine it as a linear series of events between the start point and the end point - doesn't make it that way (its more akin to guessing how the cards will land and which cards are under the others in 52 pick up then lining up dominoes). What we can do I think to maximize our chances of coming relatively close to the desired strategic outcome is attune ourselves to changes and opportunities and have the resources available to make the most of them while remaining flexible and adaptive at the tactical and operational levels.
We are not done in Iraq, not done in Afghanistan and the odds are that in some places they are designing and/or cranking out and caching Insurgent capabilities such IEDs that are far better then the ones we've seen so far, and training cadre and training documents that allow them to mix types of warfare and transition from different types of operations and retain the initiative. These UW capabilities will probably not be used solely for Internal defense but as in the past, used to foment insurgency, terrify and destabilize, possibly combined and coordinated with conventional GPF to achieve broader regional political objectives.
Best, Rob
Clarity helps avoid mischaracterization...
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Originally Posted by
Danny
Ken, the sound bite you cited is just that in the way you cited it. It needs context to understand it. It's context is the question whether we are committed to supplying the resources to do the job right. Without context, it is a mischaracterization and mere (to use your words) "sound bite."
That may be the question but I don't think you posed it in your first comment on this thread. Thus, lacking that context, you reaped. I'd also submit that whether we are committed to supplying the resources to do the job right is possibly not a good question. Within reason, all the services have for several years gotten pretty much what they asked for. Thus if the resources are not right, the requests from the field weren't right. Perhaps a better question is 'are we as a nation adequately committed to doing this job.' I suspect the answer to that question is very much perspective dependent and I suggest there is no correct answer.
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I am certain that your position isn't that "regardless of whether we are nationally committed to the mission let's leave our forces deployed." This would be an irrational position to take.
I believe the current Administration and the bulk of those who might form the next administration are in fact committed to the mission; thus the nation is both de facto and de jure committed to the mission. I realize there are those in the adminsitration, in Congress, in the Armed Forces and across the nation who wish to not be committed to the mission but my guess is they will not have their wish granted because that would be inimical to the national interest and most people realize that. The politics of the issue are more appropriate elsewhere. This is a practices and methods, not a political board.
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I am supposing that you are arguing simply for garnering the national commitment for doing it right. That said, it isn't clear how you would intend to do this since you don't say.
That would be the second incorrect supposition on your part. No 'national commitment' is required, merely the government's intention to continue the mission. I'll note that having been around since the very early '30s, I have yet to see a war in which we have been engaged that had a true 'national commitment.' WW II came very close but even it required a degree of State single-mindedness and coercion that has not existed since and is unlikely to lacking a war of national survival. Each subsequent war has had decidedly less -- and increasingly less -- 'national commitment.' That has generally been political and not necessarily practical. :mad:
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Finally, my somewhat rambling prose is related to the subject in that IEDs must be seen in the larger context of the commitments we have across the globe. With a different strategy from the beginning, listening to the Israelis who had already dealt with IEDs, and force projection, the IED problem would not have been what it is today and has been for four years.
Being vaguely aware of those global commitments I believe I can see the broader context, certainly glimmers of it...
You say with a different strategy the IED problem would not be what it is. That means we would not be in Iraq as that is the only relevant strategic decision. Obviously true.
If you perhaps meant a different thrust operationally, that's possible. if you meant with different tactics, it is also possible. Note the latter two levels only provide a possibility of a lesser problem.
I believe that listening to the Israelis early on (late '03 and '04) at the behest of the then DepSecDef was done at some length. Doesn't seem to have helped much. You do know, I suppose, that the 'V' hull technology is South African, that we had been aware of it for years before the Israelis found out Hezbollah was just as smart as they were?
I'll also note that the US Army has dealt with IEDs for many years; from the Schu mines and off-route Panzerfausts of WW II and Korea through 105 and 155 shells and 500 and even 1,000 pound bombs buried in Viet Nam all cunningly emplaced and detonated by various means. They even did a few EFPs, a technique that also dates from WW II. We know how to deal with many things -- we just let egos get in the way and refuse to use our experience and apply lessons we learned with difficulty and unnecessary casualties. It's the American way. :o
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Point? I am blaming the magnitude of the problem on senior leadership.
Magnitude of what problem? IEDs? If so, by magnitude do you mean the size, capability or quantity?
Preserving Options & Flexibility
In the five or six years after 9/11 it seemed correct to lump together together the current and potential conflicts on the horizon together into a single GWOT or a Long War - maybe it was needed to get our arms around it - maybe it was a way to consider how our perception of the world had changed - although arguably the conditions were there, they'd just not come to our shores in so violent a way.
I'm not sure its a good way to look at the world anymore. By creating a conglomerate problem we potentially mask both the real causes and potential opportunities.
I'm going to the long way around this explanation - but I think it relevant.
Like IEDs, the ability and opportunity and perceived rational for those both inside the U.S. and outside the U.S. to inflict harm on us (physically, fiscally, morally and spiritually) has increased over the years - it is a condition. Its also I think a by-product of who we are. Others see us as diverse, pluralistic, secular, capitalistic, expansive, invasive, accepting, free, vulnerable, strong, weak, and a host of other adjectives that have both positive and negative connotations - we are an enigma to some because we are often the only ones there with aid and offering hope amidst great crises, but we are also faulted with ulterior motives and being the greatest of manipulators.
Its interesting to me that we are attributed a degree of control of events that is beyond us (even among our own citizens we look for conspiracy and contrivances). If we as Americans have a difficult time reconciling how the most powerful state in history can exhibit so vast a duplicity without knowing it, imagine how that must appear from the outside - at the micro level one of the hardest things to explain to was why we could not whistle up a solution to this problem or that problem. With all the satellite media beaming in images of seemingly infinite wealth and opulence, images that rarely reflect the realities most average Americans face in day to day life your average non-American has a perception of us as elite and privileged and as such the reason we do not do something is because we choose not to. Amongst those with access to such images and influence, the more deprived and uneducated a person and their families are, the greater seems the animosity attributed to us.
I am not saying that such attacks are justified, or that they are invited, are anything like that - however, I am saying that perception matters at both the local and international level, and that as Thucydides remarked - we go to war out of fear, honor and interest. This is a condition of a world that is shrinking due to IT/mass media and other aspects of accelerated globalization through technology, curiosity and growth requiring resources and markets. There are qualities to what Friedman, Barnett, Huntington and other recent authors have described in trying to articulate the problems and possibilities they see. I think they all have a piece of it in their main thesis, but these thinkers all came to different primary cause and effect relationships - why? I think depending on how you look at it (the natural bias we carry with us) the problem will appear differently. Because we are dealing with people with diverse problems, diverse motivations, living in diverse conditions, etc - there is no singular way to describe it. This is disconcerting to us as people (I believe this is a universal human characteristic not a cultural) because we seek answers that we can accept, we seek solutions - and that leads us to identifying problems - we do this because we want to move on and find more answers -etc.
I do believe we are going to see more wars - I'm not sure I like the word "persistent" because it leads to the idea of a continuation of the same thing - a longer problem. I think its likely to be greater frequency brought on by unstable conditions where "more" peaceful political discourse has come to an impasse and one or more sides in a conversation where multiple speakers wish to have their say, perceive themselves as stifled and stagnant and as such must make choices that range from accepting their lot until new opportunities arise, or to take up arms and use violence to give an edge to their voice - there is a wide range of "in-betweens". Within the party of those who feel they have been silenced - there may be varying degrees of cooperation or contention as groups evolve and gravitate, break off, reform etc. Some may feel their grievances have been sufficiently addressed for the time being, others may simply see an opportunity to attach themselves to a more powerful group with like enough objectives to live with.
Some of our current policy problems stem from exhibiting a natural tendency to see things as we'd like them to be - problems with solutions that offer long term stability - a fire and forget solution so we can move on, be left alone and get back to business - this is often derided as being "myopic", but I think its natural - although that does not make it right - we expect more from those in whom we invest so much power.
This may be one of the reasons we seem to turn to the military decision so quickly - it seems on the surface to offer an unambiguous decision - however, our culture and values require us to fix things and make them better - its who we are - and I can't imagine wanting to be anything else - in the past when we have had to resort to military force we have been the most gracious of victors and the world has recognized us for it.
The best we may be able to do is to look at each war we make or involve ourselves in differently. Even if on the surface they exhibit similar characteristics, the peoples who take part in the war(s) will see themselves differently - even we change - continuous war does something to populations - again Thucydides makes some worthy observations about how Athenians and the greater Greek world changed over the course of the Peloponnesian War - not just the general population of Athens- but also the way the political leadership changed, and the way in which smaller city-states within the Greek world were altered.
We should refrain from distilling and generalization of the wars we must contemplate - each should be seen in its uniqueness. Each should be considered in political context of all the participants. While we must have grand strategy that husbands ends, ways and means toward a political purpose with balance and consistency - we must also preserve unforeseen opportunities, and the capability to take advantage of them, which might only come into being as a result of inter-action. I'm not sure we can do that if we lump everything together under a banner where we are predisposed to see what we expect, rather then what is.
Best Regards, Rob
Wading into the gator pond...
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Originally Posted by
Ken White
I believe the current Administration and the bulk of those who might form the next administration are in fact committed to the mission; thus the nation is both de facto and de jure committed to the mission. I realize there are those in the adminsitration, in Congress, in the Armed Forces and across the nation who wish to not be committed to the mission but my guess is they will not have their wish granted because that would be inimical to the national interest and most people realize that. The politics of the issue are more appropriate elsewhere. This is a practices and methods, not a political board.
Ken,
Could you expand on this a little? I am confused to what you're trying to say here? Are you saying the current administration is committed to finding an end to the war by creating a national-level strategy that ensures our troops are given focus and direction, thus doing those things that will bring the conflict in Iraq to an eventual end? If so, could you cite some examples of this strategy and how that is playing out in Iraq? Could you cite some examples of where GEN Patreaus and LTG Odierno have clearly articulated the "road to victory"?
Thanks, PT
I can expand on anything, PT...
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Originally Posted by
Pragmatic Thinker
Ken,
Could you expand on this a little? I am confused to what you're trying to say here?...
Well, very little. (but I can state that little at great length :) ). It sort of says it all. I think perhaps you're trying to read things into the statement. Sorry for the confusion.
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...Are you saying the current administration is committed to finding an end to the war by creating a national-level strategy that ensures our troops are given focus and direction, thus doing those things that will bring the conflict in Iraq to an eventual end?...
No. Tackling those thoughts in reverse order; there is little we can do to bring the conflict in Iraq to an eventual end. Such end will be mostly up to the Iraqis and to a lesser extent up to us and in varying still lesser amounts (and in no particular order) to the Turks, the Syrians, the Saudis, the Iranians and various Islamist factions. All have a vote of varying clout. Giving the troops focus and direction in Iraq is not a strategic issue, it is an operational issue and thus the province of DoD and the Armed Forces.
I believe this Administration has committed to a strategy wherein the "end" of war in Iraq is only one part of an extensive global strategy that envisions a lengthy worldwide effort to reduce the threat of international terrorism to an acceptable level; Iraq thus is only one of many ongoing efforts -- it is merely the most visible. I further believe this Administration has done that in such a way as to preclude successors from easily disabling or diverting that strategy and I also believe that this strategy in in the national interest. I could quibble about a lot of the techniques and the direction of some efforts but it doesn't have to be my way to work... :wry:
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If so, could you cite some examples of this strategy and how that is playing out in Iraq?...
The strategy IMO (obviously I have no clue to the content of discussions or to the decisions, just my inferences from open sources) is what put us in Iraq and it broad based, flexible and, with respect to Iraq in particular, is aimed at accelerating to emergence of the ME into the world mainstream among other things. That strategy generally does not dictate operational or tactical methodology but relies on the government agencies (to include DoD, the Intel Community, Treasury and others) to develop and employ proper and effective methods to conduct rather broad based missions world wide (and that is important). That is, also IMO, as it should be. :cool:
What is "playing out" in Iraq are the operational decisions of those agencies with respect to that particular operation as a part of that strategy. Properly, the Administration is not dictating operational parameters but is relying on the Agencies to do it right.
I think thus far in Iraq we have seen three distinct phases that have changed the character of our efforts. The first phase lasted about 18 months and was characterized by excessive concern with force protection and a great lack of knowledge of what to do and how to do it. In essence, the operators did not do it right and thus, they did not aid the overall strategy but instead introduced an inadvertent wrinkle.
The next 18 months or so consisted of a learning phase and a realization of the need (if not well executed efforts) to install a viable government and develop Iraqi internal defense capability. The most recent 18 months or so have seen a pretty good refinement of that and implementation of more effective tactic and techniques. Things there are going fairly well as nearly as I can determine. We'll see.
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... Could you cite some examples of where GEN Patreaus and LTG Odierno have clearly articulated the "road to victory"?
Thanks, PT
No, I pay little to no attention to what the Generals (all of them, now and then, here and there) or politicians say. IMO, one can put little stock in the words of either and what they say is pretty predictable. I have, however, closely watched what they do. I do not think there is any such thing as a "road to victory" in Iraq and after our initial missteps in the spring of 2003, there never was...
I have complained here that the use of words like "win," "lose," "defeat" and "victory" in relation to any counterinsurgency effort is a terrible idea. "Shock and awe" was one of the most stupid phrases ever applied anywhere in any war. Words are important and the wrong words can send a message of unachievable goals or results and can build false expectations in all the actors -- and observers -- involved.
One cannot "win" a counterinsurgency war unless one kills all the insurgents and that obviously is not an option. The best one can do is achieve an acceptable outcome. That's the best anyone has achieved in the post WW II era (to include the Brits in Malaya and East Africa). My belief is that is probable in Iraq and fairly soon.
Having said all that, recall my original comment you quoted, "I believe the current Administration and the bulk of those who might form the next administration are in fact committed to the mission; thus the nation is both de facto and de jure committed to the mission. I realize there are those in the administration, in Congress, in the Armed Forces and across the nation who wish to not be committed to the mission but my guess is they will not have their wish granted because that would be inimical to the national interest and most people realize that...."
That simply meant that I think most people -- not all -- realize that precipitous withdrawal from Iraq would confirm what the opposition has long said in many of their tapes and videos they've released; confirmation of the fact that the US is the proverbial toothless tiger, has no staying power and is totally untrustworthy. It would also lend credence to their claim that we are assaulting Islam and have no altruistic motive and would almost certainly adversely impact other equally important elements of the strategy. In the very pragmatic ME, inability to perform leads to rejection in all aspects.
Most Americans realize on a visceral level that such a message is not wise and not in our national interest. I think that is a correct sensing on the part of most Americans.