Army Officer Accuses Generals of 'Intellectual and Moral Failures'

[jonSlack]

I am of the opinion that if we had a larger 'footprint' early on - vacuum period post-May 2003 - then maybe we would not be facing the degree of insurgency we face now. Of course, the CPA foul-ups did not help things either. Still, the number one priority should have been security for the Iraqi population - we most certainly did not have enough boots-on-the-ground to provide that security.

I agree, with one caveat. An increased number of troops would have helped as long as there had been enough leaders with a good understanding of COIN who were able to create and implement effective strategies. Whenever I see the quote from former CSA GEN Shinseki about the level of forces required, I always wonder if they would have been used effectively or if senior leaders were merely reaching for a bigger hammer.

Andrew J. Bacevich - What's an Iraqi Life Worth? (09JUL06)

Gen. Tommy Franks, who commanded U.S. forces when they entered Iraq more than three years ago, famously declared: "We don't do body counts." Franks was speaking in code. What he meant was this: The U.S. military has learned the lessons of Vietnam -- where body counts became a principal, and much derided, public measure of success -- and it has no intention of repeating that experience. Franks was not going to be one of those generals re-fighting the last war.

Unfortunately, Franks and other senior commanders had not so much learned from Vietnam as forgotten it. This disdain for counting bodies, especially those of Iraqi civilians killed in the course of U.S. operations, is among the reasons why U.S. forces find themselves in another quagmire. It's not that the United States has an aversion to all body counts. We tally every U.S. service member who falls in Iraq, and rightly so. But only in recent months have military leaders finally begun to count -- for internal use only -- some of the very large number of Iraqi noncombatants whom American bullets and bombs have killed.

Through the war's first three years, any Iraqi venturing too close to an American convoy or checkpoint was likely to come under fire. Thousands of these "escalation of force" episodes occurred. Now, Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, the commander of U.S. ground forces in Iraq, has begun to recognize the hidden cost of such an approach. "People who were on the fence or supported us" in the past "have in fact decided to strike out against us," he recently acknowledged.

In the early days of the insurgency, some U.S. commanders appeared oblivious to the possibility that excessive force might produce a backlash. They counted on the iron fist to create an atmosphere conducive to good behavior. The idea was not to distinguish between "good" and "bad" Iraqis, but to induce compliance through intimidation.

"You have to understand the Arab mind," one company commander told the New York Times, displaying all the self-assurance of Douglas MacArthur discoursing on Orientals in 1945. "The only thing they understand is force -- force, pride and saving face." Far from representing the views of a few underlings, such notions penetrated into the upper echelons of the American command. In their book "Cobra II," Michael R. Gordon and Gen. Bernard E. Trainor offer this ugly comment from a senior officer: "The only thing these sand niggers understand is force and I'm about to introduce them to it."

Such crass language, redolent with racist, ethnocentric connotations, speaks volumes. These characterizations, like the use of "gooks" during the Vietnam War, dehumanize the Iraqis and in doing so tacitly permit the otherwise impermissible. Thus, Abu Ghraib and Haditha -- and too many regretted deaths, such as that of Nahiba Husayif Jassim.

Thomas E. Ricks - 'It Looked Weird and Felt Wrong' (24JUL06)

Today, the 4th Infantry and its commander, Maj. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, are best remembered for capturing former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, one of the high points of the U.S. occupation. But in the late summer of 2003, as senior U.S. commanders tried to counter the growing insurgency with indiscriminate cordon-and-sweep operations, the 4th Infantry was known for aggressive tactics that may have appeared to pacify the northern Sunni Triangle in the short term but that, according to numerous Army internal reports and interviews with military commanders, alienated large parts of the population.

The unit, a heavy armored division despite its name, was known for "grabbing whole villages, because combat soldiers [were] unable to figure out who was of value and who was not," according to a subsequent investigation of the 4th Infantry Division's detainee operations by the Army inspector general's office. Its indiscriminate detention of Iraqis filled Abu Ghraib prison, swamped the U.S. interrogation system and overwhelmed the U.S. soldiers guarding the prison.

Lt. Col. David Poirier, who commanded a military police battalion attached to the 4th Infantry Division and was based in Tikrit from June 2003 to March 2004, said the division's approach was indiscriminate. "With the brigade and battalion commanders, it became a philosophy: 'Round up all the military-age males, because we don't know who's good or bad.' " Col. Alan King, a civil affairs officer working at the Coalition Provisional Authority, had a similar impression of the 4th Infantry's approach. "Every male from 16 to 60" that the 4th Infantry could catch was detained, he said. "And when they got out, they were supporters of the insurgency."

If the level of forces requested by GEN Shinseki had been deployed in 2003 would the result have been more Mosuls (under the 101st) and Tal Afars (under 3ACR) or more EOF incidents and indiscriminate cordon and searches knocking Iraqis' off of the fence over to the other side?

Successful military operations, COIN or kinetic, take both the right amount of forces and the right leaders with the right training, education, and an accurate understanding of the fight they are in.

[Bill Meara]

I say three cheers for LTC Yingling. He speaks the truth. But it is (as he indicates) an old truth, an old story.

During my relatively brief time in the Army, while working on counterinsurgency in Central America most of the problems of the personnel system discussed by Yingling were glaringly apparent. Even to a lowly Captain.

Several of us are helping to fill library book shelves with detailed descriptions of the in-the-field consequences that this kind of folly had in previous conflicts. Sadly, it seems that little has changed.