(Cont'd)

2) Sassaman talks about the lack of any coordination between security and reconstruction. The instructions came down to "spend money," but there was no effort to coordinate the work between the civil affairs and combat battalions. Money was given to local officials in league with the insurgents, thereby circumventing any attempt by the combat battalions to use money as a carrot for reining in the insurgents.

This was reminiscent of the Philippines, 1899-1902. In his book on that war, Brian Linn explains how the initial strategy in the First District, Department of Northern Luzon was, like in Iraq, to "spend money." After a while, however,they discovered that the civil governments were actually controlled by the insurgents, and that the money was supporting the insurgency. Only after months of subsidizing the insurgency did the Army realize security had to be established first, and that money would have to be used as a carrot to get the civic officials to take responsibility for the actions of their townspeople.

Sassaman argues that in Iraq, we were never serious about security. He repeatedly details how his brigade commander told him that if he never patrolled, his men would not get killed or injured, and would all be able to go home at the end of their tour. This argument, which Sassaman found widely prevalent in Salah ad-Din province, was based on the two arguments that we could win the support of the Iraqis by throwing money at problems, and that we could quickly turn responsibility for the whole mess over to Iraqi security forces/police. As in the Philippines, not only was the money often going right into insurgent coffers - or at least convincing local officials that we weren't really serious about cracking down on support for the insurgents and would send in piles of money either way - but our plan to turn over control of the counterinsurgency to the Iraqis proved to be a disaster too.

Even though this was part of Sassaman's 4 point strategy that I outlined above, the detail of his experience concedes that it was a failure, (even if he doesn't admit as much). He argues, "The vast majority of the police were dishonest, imcompetent and undisciplined...even with our supervision, the Iraqi police situation improved only modestly, and changes came in fits and starts." He continues, "Over the course of a year, we ultimately replaced the entire police force, but the transformation came at a high cost. It was simply too vast a problem for us to train, educate and motivate new Iraqi police officers while fighting an insurgency amid a simultaneous rebuilding effort. The Iraqi police problem will exist until at least the next generation because the majority of law enforcement officers are motivated by selfishness, greed and fear rather than public service." The ISF, he continues, "suffers from sectarian divisions." He goes on to talk about the bond that was established between those from the ISF and the American soldiers, but has nothing to say about the efficacy of the ISF. Full transfer of security to the Iraqis, he argues, could take twenty-five years or more.

A major theme I've noticed during the book is how what he says and his experience detailed in the book don't always logically coincide. The confusion over what is meant by "hearts and minds" is one example. His detailed account of the failure of our strategy to turn over control of the counterinsurgency to the Iraqis, yet his claim that such a strategy is necessary to win, is another. Another example is his claim that, above all else, he wanted to show the Iraqis that “we could provide for their security against outside raiding parties.” Some of the ways in which he tried to demonstrate this, however, don’t really seem relevant – and could arguably have increased hostility against the American forces. For example, when teenage boys gave American soldiers the finger, they would be arrested and held until their parents came to get them out of jail. It is unclear, to me at least, how this contributes to the perception that the Americans could protect the people from the insurgents.

In other words, it seems that where Sassaman is due for criticism, his actions directly contradicted the the counterinsurgency strategy he and his men had laid out for the battalion – or at least the strategy he now says they laid out for the battalion. Of course, theoretical constructs don't always translate cleanly into action on the battlefield. Nevertheless, it is ironic that the theory Sassaman puts forth in the book probably wouldn’t meet with all that much opposition. His own accounts of the battles he fought, and the tactical and operational decisions he made, however, do not always seem to adhere to the strategy. That seemed, to me in reading the book at least, to be his biggest undoing.