Iraq education and training (merged thread)

[GorTex6]

While we're struggling to define and obtain the moral high ground, our enemy doesn't even understand the concept. In time the Iraqi people will see this, and we'll have a cascading success.

At the ground level(E-1 to E-6), we do not want to understand the concept Pop culture demands it !

The enemy exploits it

[CPT Holzbach]

Mr. Moore said:

our enemy is his own worst enemy.

Indeed. We will win (or the Iraqis will) because the insurgents really are monsters. Many more people understand that then is recognized in the media.

Mr. Tex 6 said:

At the ground level(E-1 to E-6), we do not want to understand the concept

I find this to be one of the biggest tactical level problems over here, which can have strategic reach a la the "strategic corporal" effect. The soldiers and junior NCOs are not trained at all in this kind of war. My old unit (mortar platoon) really believed that hammering certain bad neighborhoods with HE rounds until the locals dropped dime on the bad guys would be an effective way of winning in Baghdad. I constantly had to tell them that such methods have never worked and wont work here either. Some of them just couldnt believe that. It revealed a drastic lack of training where it is (as always) needed most: at the soldier level.

Hysterical humor item: an ad by the United Nations Foundation in Foreign Policy magazine boasted that the UN "helped 8.2 million Iraqis make it to the polls" in 2005. Yeah...not so much. I dont remember seeing many blue helmets on the streets. The shamefully under-reported truth is this: the amazing turn out and security of the referendum was 99% the accomplishment of the Iraqi people and the Iraqi Army and Police.

[GorTex6]

It revealed a drastic lack of training where it is (as always) needed most: at the soldier level.

Training is not the problem in this area; it is the socialization of the particular age/generation/era.