What are the top 5 things we've learned from OIF

[SWJED]

1. There is no such thing as a “slam dunk”, regardless. Even if issued from the 7th floor in a building located off a certain exit off the George Washington Parkway.

2. When the Commander-in-Chief challenges terrorists and insurgents to “bring it on” – duck. Even "dead-enders" have a certain sense of pride.

3. Mission accomplished has no direct relationship to war accomplished, excepting the Hiroshima and Nagasaki missions.

4. Regime change is not an end-state.

5. In a formation, and as part of a unit conducting COIN, look to your right and then to your left. One of you ‘gets it’, one of you is trying to ‘get it’ and the other has a tool box filled with hammers. Be wary of the later – he will get you and your guys killed and be subject to a 60’ Minutes exposé – with pictures and / or video on FaceBook or YouTube.

6. The ‘Peter Principle’ is accelerated – where military commanders and civilian leaders are promoted to his or her level of incompetence more rapidly than during peacetime. When things go south they bow out or are forced on (not fired), go to the private sector and awarded the Medal of Freedom.

7. Lessons learned are more often than not lessons chronicled and will appear once again several years down the road as yet another ‘new insight’.

8. Strategic thought should not be attempted by tactical generals or political ideologues.

9. Campaign planning should not be attempted by tactical generals.

10. It ain’t over till it’s over.

11. Always heed the words of General Anthony Zinni, General David Petraeus and General James Mattis.

12. Read what the generals mentioned at # 11 read.

13. Part-timers are just that, God bless them. Move all critical skill sets / capabilities into the active component.

14. There is no such thing as an expeditionary interagency capability. You have to build it, they may come, or not.

15. Don't believe those who say they support the troops but don't support the mission. They haven't been there and haven't done it. Extreme paint-ball does not count. More often than not they are condescending SOBs and wouldn’t give you the time of day ‘on the street’.

[wm]

I'm not sure which is worse--that you're quoting the Princess Bride or that I recognize that you're quoting the Princess Bride.

I think we have a lot of leaders who took lessons at the same schools as Vizzini (the bald Sicilian) and Prince Humperdinck.

[Vizzini has just cut the rope The Dread Pirate Roberts is climbing up]
Vizzini: HE DIDN'T FALL? INCONCEIVABLE.
Inigo Montoya: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means

I further think The Princess Bride ought to be mandatory viewing in every senior service academy, along with Dr. Strangelove and Forrest Gump or Being There.

So that's another lesson learned--many senior leaders do not seem to have a real clue.

[jcustis]

I think Dave summed up all the ones I was thinking, and a lot more. A few to add though are these:

-Sometimes it's okay to bring in an outsider to offer some commonsense insight into what is being done wrong and what could be done better (Kilcullen).

-An "oh ####" (Haditha) will negate just about every attaboy if it's bad enough.

-Layering warriors with all the pillows of force protection ignores the basic premise that sometimes we have to assume some occupational hazards to accomplish the mission (the IED fight). Doing so may actually hurt the troops.

[SteveMetz]

[Norfolk]

I think that there a little more than just 5 or even 5+ lessons learned or offered in your modest tome Steve.

[120mm]

1. Don't play soccer with PKT mines.
2. Put on your Pro Mask BEFORE running an M256 kit.
3. If you find a bunch of soda cans painted light yellow or light green, do NOT attempt to juggle them (WTF is BLU-97B soda, anyway???).
4. If that newly dug earth in front of your hooch has a bit too much "give" to it, or smells bad, it's best to call graves registration right away, versus later.
5. You shouldn't shoot at cylinders giving off red "smoke" during the heat of the day.

There. That's my list.

Honorable mention: If you're going to help you buddy up into the back of a 5 ton, don't use your loaded, off-safe M16, and don't extend it muzzle first, with your finger on the trigger.

[Reid Bessenger]

Tough to encapsulate so complex a set of issues and observations in a list like this, but for me they include:

1. Conflict is a human phenomena that takes place in a global environment. The global environment provides advantage to those best able to quickly and consistently communicate their desires, intentions and thoughts to a variety of audiences. Read "internet," "television" etc, and leaders who maintain a responsive, cogent presence.

2. The subordination of national interest to partisan political interest, while a deplorable state of affairs, needs to be taken into consideration by those seeking to fulfill responsibilities to national constituents rather than interest groups (I include all political parties in this category of interest groups). The fix here needs to address general popular apathy.

3. Hubris cannot be tolerated. I know strong leaders who listen. If a person in a position of authority has always been the smartest person in rooms they occupied, they will do wrong.

4. Priority must be given in all organizations associated with a whole-government approach to conflict to maintaining members within each who are relatively unconstrained in their application of thought to the conflict's environment, and within it the ends, ways and means that are pursued.

5. The "short-term/simple" addicition impedes our pursuit of interests. "STS" inculcates a comfortable ignorance of second and third order effects and complexity in general, and relies on the fallacious, alchemical assumption that nonlinear complexity can be unilaterally reduced to a linear proposition.

[SteveMetz]

1. Don't play soccer with PKT mines.
2. Put on your Pro Mask BEFORE running an M256 kit.
3. If you find a bunch of soda cans painted light yellow or light green, do NOT attempt to juggle them (WTF is BLU-97B soda, anyway???).
4. If that newly dug earth in front of your hooch has a bit too much "give" to it, or smells bad, it's best to call graves registration right away, versus later.
5. You shouldn't shoot at cylinders giving off red "smoke" during the heat of the day.

There. That's my list.

Honorable mention: If you're going to help you buddy up into the back of a 5 ton, don't use your loaded, off-safe M16, and don't extend it muzzle first, with your finger on the trigger.

6. It takes a lot of kerosene to make MRE poop burn.

[goesh]

Steve, is this going to be the cover pic for the next book - A Line of Smoke in the Air: Conventional Applications in Iraq......?

[SteveMetz]

Steve, is this going to be the cover pic for the next book - A Line of Smoke in the Air: Conventional Applications in Iraq......?

There is an associated story that I suspect will become part of Army War College lore.

The latrines at Camp Bucca in the spring of 2003 were just sort of semi enclosed plywood boxes on top of 55 gallon drums. Now, I happen to have a very low gag tolerance. So there I was in the plywood box, 100 degree heat, clouds of flies, perched over top of about 54 gallons of crap. I got a horrible gagging fit to the point I couldn't even pop smoke and withdraw. I was on the verge of barfing. In the next "stall" was Ed Filiberti, my colleague and friend who was, at the time, a light infantry colonel (now retired). My gagging made him convulse with laughter to the point that he too nearly feel into the poop cauldron.

The way I figure it, I was THAT close to a Purple Heart.

[Rank amateur]

I think the most important one for you guys is: People don't like to surrender. You need to kill them all, give them somewhere to retreat to, negotiate with them or recruit them to your side. (The first can be a war crime. The last three aren't much fun and involve skills that aren't widely taught in boot camp.)

I'll disagree with two above.

1. Assuming you know what people want can get you killed. Even if you're right, assuming that they want it from you can get you killed.

2. Beware of people who advocate war but claim they can "best serve their county outside of the military."

I think most of the lessons need to be learned by the politicians, but a couple more that might be relevant.

1. There is almost always a low tech way to defeat a hi tech weapon.
2. People can be killed, wounded and forced to retreat, but they can't be "shocked and awed."
3. War may be politics by other means but spinning battlefield facts for political reasons gets people killed.
4. In a democracy, people get the government they deserve.

I don't think you can expect the public to become military experts, but they do need to know the difference between conventional and asymmetric battles, that asymmetric battles are long and costly, and they need to be able to recognize politicians who don't know the difference.

Most important of all, generals need to learn how to deal with politicians who don't have a clue about military matters.

Finally, let's hope that Al Qaeda never learns that blowing up your strongest supporters eventually creates recruiting problems.

[Ron Humphrey]

[QUOTE=Penta;31945]

4. Languages. The old thing where a kid can go into the military at age 18 and come out at 21-22, maybe have gone overseas, and still speak only English fluently...Must die a rapid death. Whether it means issuing every new enlistee and ROTC cadet a copy of Rosetta Stone or expanding on-base language training (or, my preference, putting our tech-obsession towards improving language training by a massive extent) or whatever: Every soldier, by end of their first tour of duty, should be conversationally fluent in at least one language besides English - Fluent being defined as "No, I don't need a translator to talk to a native speaker of said language".

Reference the necessity for all soldiers to become fluent ,although well intentioned it will never happen. That doesn't mean it shouldn't be tried but having worked with many who were ultra skilled at some things but, linguistically challenged non-the less I would agree that all should be required to at least learn sufficiently about the cultures within which they find themselves.

On to the points:

1- Collaboration equals a higher degree of flexibility and ingenuity

2- Lessons being learned cross referenced with lessons learned equals
a better criteria for training and adaptation

3- Soldiers still have to be led
a) They can be led to lead
b) They can be taught to follow
c) Commanders have to be able to tell which are which

4- Strategic Intent must be implemented in some form or another from the smallest unit to the largest ( Global exposure = Strategic Everybody)

5- If it can be built, created, designed; it can and will be re-engineered, broken or destroyed

6- The populace has everything to gain from freedom,
Thus the enemies have nothing to lose in their fight against it/Us

[Ski]

My simplistic take on Lessons Learned:

1. The "Total Force" concept integrating the AC and RC working pretty well considering the stress put on the force by...

2. Poor planning in the beginning takes a long time to overcome, if it is even able to be overcome.

3. It is exceptionally difficult to recruit and retain qualified personnel into a volunteer Army during a politically questionable war.

4. Modern warfare is going to be extraordinally expensive for Western armies in the future if ground forces have to be used for any length of time. We are going to be paying for this one, and so will our grandchildren.

5. Transformation is better done in peacetime, where it actually might have a chance to be tested and evaluated before being performed on the two way rifle range.

[Rob Thornton]

Ski-

Thanks for bringing these up. Might be worth discussing a couple of the points you made:

Poor planning in the beginning takes a long time to overcome, if it is even able to be overcome.

I think there has to be a qualifier in there. What I mean is that even if the plan is resource poor or is committed to without flexibility of change initially, the limiting factor is in the leadership to recognize the deficiencies in the plan, and call for the changes in time to make a difference. I think it would be fair however to say that assumptions or beliefs can take a while to overcome - and that at the strategic levels personalities and politics influence that time line.

While Clausewitz's piece about the critical importance of understanding the nature of the war you are embarking on (so you can take inventory and figure out what you will need to win it - be it capabilities, numbers or domestic will), it does not mean that you cant recover from not doing so initially - just as long as you figure it out fast enough to change before the other guy shuts you down. The better the leadership, the sooner we'll figure it out.

Transformation is better done in peacetime, where it actually might have a chance to be tested and evaluated before being performed on the two way rifle range.

I'm not sure about that one either. You might not get to pick and choose when you change. Arguably the "Transformation" window was thought to be open at the time it was initiated - then it was argued (and maybe correctly) that the war(s) provided an opportunity to transform as the need was clearly visible. Now what could be argued - is what our priorities were for transformation - be they people, minds, culture, hardware, etc. Overall - I'd say we've done OK - its been hard, but modularity has provided some real flexibility - FCS is starting to kick out some spin outs, and our doctrine has had some real changes. I guess what I mean is that war in itself has proven transformational - maybe just different from that originally envisioned back in 2000. I'd say we are still transforming.

Great thought provoking points - and worthy of discussion.

Best, Rob

[Uboat509]

I'm just a lowley SFC. I ain't got me much o' that book larnin' but I have a few things that I learned during my tour.

1. Speaking the language is nice and all but nothing can substitute for having a really good local national terp. It is nice to talk about everybody learning to speak the language but that is neither practical nor possible. Sure everybody can learn a few key phrases and some can learn to speak it well enough to have simple conversations but that's about it unless you want to send everybody to DLI for 18 months to learn Arabic and even then you will still need terps to help you with cultural issues.

2. John Q. Public has ADD. Keeping him focused on anything has become more and more difficult as the years go by. Combine that with the fact that most Americans have neither served nor know someone well who has served and you get a public who has neither the knowledge nor attention span to understand what is going on over there. Now add to that all the "experts," cherry picked facts and good old fashioned bull#### thrown in by partisans on both sides of the issue and John never really had a chance. I don't think John is a moron (although the excruciating popularity of America's Top Model and other shows of that ilk certainly give me pause) but he really just does not have the tools to understand all the issues at stake. There was a poll recently (I can't find it now) that showed that a significant number of Americans actually believe that the US Government had advanced knowledge of 9/11 but did nothing to stop it, either because of massive incompetance or because POTUS wanted it to happen or whatever other load of conspiracy theory they happen to believe. Now, having said all that, the powers that be have done a monumentally poor job of explaining things to John and that has allowed the partisans bury John under a giant pile of crap.

3. One of the key things to remember about dealing with a foreign culture is that it is foreign. When I hear a LTC stating that he just can't understand why the locals will turn out en-mass for a tribal militia headed by their own tribe but won't come out to join the IP (which happened to be dominated by another tribe) it makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. RTK points out that Iraqis want what we want, safety and security for their families but there is a whole tribal angle to everything that is entirely alien to most Americans. Some commanders try to incorporate that into their operations with varying degrees of success, some just ignore it and some think that they can undo 4000 years of tribalism in a few short years.

4. The US military is notoriously poor at thinking all the way through a problem. Case in point, a few years ago one of our guys was killed while wearing Paraclete armor. A piece of shrapnel penetrated the side and entered his heart. The backlash was immediate, Paraclete armor had not been evaluated by NATIC and it was therefore banned until it could be evaluated. It seems like common sense, after all it may have contributed to the death of an American soldier. The problem is that the Paraclete he was wearing was an armor carrier. The actual armor inside was the stuff he had taken out of his issue armor. Nevertheless we were stuck with the ban and we were even disallowed from ordering Paraclete pouches on our DSORs. Another case is Underarmor shirts. There is a possibility that shirt will melt to the skin in a flash fire ergo it is banned, problem solved right? Well, no. First of all, it doesn’t take into account the reason that people wear them in the first place. It is probably pretty easy to get stats on how many people have been affected by the flash burns but how many studies are there about positive effects of Underarmor and equivalent clothing? Does it cut down on heat casualties? What about things like prickly heat? Does it make Joe pay a little more attention because he isn’t sucking quite so badly? How often do these flash burns happen? I’m guessing that happens less than heat injuries. It probably makes sense to ban these types of clothing in aircraft or armored vehicles but what about the rest of us? And while we are on the subject, this whole issue has focused on the Heat Gear Underarmor but personally I have not been issued any cold weather gear that wasn’t synthetic in many a year.

5. Practicality often trumps morality. This is not a popular concept but that is the fact of things. The dissolution of the Iraqi army is a prime example. An argument can be, and has been, made that the army was one of the primary instruments of Saddam’s reign and that the moral thing to do was to disband it. Most of us here also agree that it was a really dumb thing to do. We are beginning to realize that in order to get things done in Iraq we are going to have deal with elements that we had considered terrorists. Certainly that is not going to be considered the high moral road but it is becoming increasingly clear that that is what is necessary for us to achieve an acceptable outcome in Iraq. I’ll be honest, the moral arguments against torture have much less effect on me than the practical.


SFC W

[wm]

5. Transformation is better done in peacetime, where it actually might have a chance to be tested and evaluated before being performed on the two way rifle range.

I suspect that transformation to some degree or another has occurred during most wars. I know it happened on both sides during both World Wars. We did it during Viet Nam to a degree as well. I suspect that Rob is quite right when he said that war is transformational by its very nature (I am re-phrasing what I took to be the intent of

war in itself has proven transformational.

Rob, please correct me if I misunderstood your meaning there.

[Rob Thornton]

I'm just a lowley SFC. I ain't got me much o' that book larnin' but I have a few things that I learned during my tour.

I've learned have come from SNCOs who only spoke slow so I could keep up they are the backbone of the military.

Best, Rob

[Rank amateur]

RTK points out that Iraqis want what we want, safety and security for their families but there is a whole tribal angle to everything that is entirely alien to most Americans.

Saying "Iraqis want what we want," is like saying "Democrats and Republicans want the same thing: a better America." Technically it's correct, but it hides more than it reveals.

[RTK]

Saying "Iraqis want what we want," is like saying "Democrats and Republicans want the same thing: a better America." Technically it's correct, but it hides more than it reveals.

Quoting out of context, aren't we?

Go back and read the rest of the quote.

[Rob Thornton]

Hey Wayne,

I suspect that transformation to some degree or another has occurred during most wars. I know it happened on both sides during both World Wars. We did it during Viet Nam to a degree as well. I suspect that Rob is quite right when he said that war is transformational by its very nature (I am re-phrasing what I took to be the intent of
Quote:

Originally Posted by Rob Thornton
war in itself has proven transformational.

Rob, please correct me if I misunderstood your meaning there.

Yea - the whole idea of change, how it happens and what it means is something that really interests me and I spend allot of time thinking about it. Sometimes change seems to happen and we don't even know it, other times we force it, but don't consider all the other things it changes which might have been put into place for good reason. Need to sleep on that one.

Best, Rob