Quote Originally Posted by jcustis View Post
We weren't ready for Phase IV execution, for a number of reasons we have beaten to death here. And since I believe we are just finally getting to a point where we are effectively understanding and employing COIN, we would have been woefully miserable at it five years ago, but would have just had more forces plodding around and breaking more pottery.
Although I always read your thoughtful postings with interest, I have to disagree with you here. I think we have succumbed to a meta-narrative that tells us that we have been screwed up in Iraq up until Feb 2007 and then once the Surge hits then the corner is turned. As you probably can tell from my writings in other places I disagree violently with this interpretation.

I do think massive amounts of more troops would have made a difference if we were looking to really control the country with military force. I remember as a BCT XO in April 2003 in Tikrit trying to balance early Coin ops with raids, and with trying to secure all of the ammo dumps around; we simply did not have enough troops to do it all. To think that with the same number of troops but in your implied counterfactual having them trained on Coin and perhaps with a General like General Patraeus at the helm then things would have turned out differently places way too much on the idea that the American military is really in control of things in Iraq.

For example and jumping ahead to the current situation; if it was the additional brigades under the Surge practicing so-called new coin tactics that lowered violence in the latter half of 2007 and if the majority of those brigades continuing to practice their so called new methods are still in place, then how do you explain the recent increase in violence not only in the south but in Baghdad?

The assumption to Dr Kilkullen's thinking is that good Coin methods underpinned by sound theoretical thinking can replace mass of troops on the ground. I dont buy it and I never have. His Jenga slide actually reminds me of the way many airmen during world war II and even after would use metaphor and theoretical constructs to explain how the relatively simple act of dropping HE bombs on structures and blowing them up would have this sophisticated network-like, systems effect on the entire enemy economy. John Warden's rings comes to mind here too.

I have come to conclude from a military perspective that using American military power to conduct Coin in Iraq is impossible.

gentile