The Conventional, SOF Debate in OIF.

[Bill Moore]

SSG Rock your questions are important for all of us as we evolve (transform if you will). Unfortunately you ran into one of our less professional brothers who obviously has little experience in war, so from the SF community I apologize for his degrading remarks concerning our outstanding conventional forces.

Special Forces could not have won this war using guerrilla warfare for a number of reasons, but perhaps the most important is the fact that Iraq's neighbors would not have supported a Kurdish insurgency, and only Iran would have supported a Shi'a insurgency. Turkey, Saudi, Jordan, etc. would have been terrified and it would have destabilized the entire region. The retired SF CPT who claimed to be an expert on campaign planning should have took notes when you spoke to him. While this war plan had a lot of shortcommings, there was still a lot of smart folks who considered a variety of courses of action to include supporting an insurrection and it didn't pass muster.

Now at the risk of appearing two faced I will add there is much room for improvement on how our conventional forces operate in this environment, and they are improving rapidly. I think GEN Casey's campaign plan is on target, but I'm not sure he is getting sufficient buy in from some of his subordinate commanders in the field. Some of our conventional forces are doing an outstanding job of working with and helping develop the Iraqi Army, while others are simply giving it lip service. From the military aspect of DIME developing a capable Iraqi Army and police force is key to long term stability (assuming we can obtain stability) in the country.

Conventional forces have a vital role and we can't win this war without them. Special Forces couldn't operate in Iraq the way they do without the security and logistics provided by our conventional brothers period. This truly is an example of the one team, one fight concept and those who have been there understand that.

SF didn't win the war in Afghanistan, but they were hugely successful in using guerrilla warfare and joint fires to defeat the ragtag Taliban Army. That wasn't the war though, that was a battle within the war. Now the conventional forces and SF compliment one another in maintaining security and developing a professional Afghan Army.

What's obviously missing in both Iraq and Afghanistan is a capable State Department and other government agencies (such as commerce). While there are heroes in all these organizations, they need additional funding and restructuring to enable them to do their jobs. In short our job (military) is to set the conditions for them to succeed. If they're not capable of succeeding we're going to be on the two way range for a long time.