Neo Challenges the Matrix

[Ken White]

Most realistic Army TV show...

[Tom Odom]

Most realistic Army TV show...

well they were Cav...

Where are Ryan and Neal?

Steve Metz: I think you guys are using the wrong movie to analyze American strategy making.

You were the one who brought up a cartoon fish.

Actually I think Beevis probably has a good grasp of strategy. It's Butthead who keeps giving him bumm advice...

[carl]

This article is a very great puzzlement to me.

COL. MacGregor seems to decry the "Anbar Awakening" but what was the alternative to the men on the spot at the time? They adroitly took advantage of a political rift, a big one, in the Sunni community and induced the tribes to overtly join with the coalition forces to mostly destroy AQI; an AQI that was, contrary to a statement in the article, almost wholly composed of Iraqi, not foreign fighters.

From what I've read there is much more too this than cash payments to sheiks. In Ramadi at least, AQI was very much disliked but the tribes weren't strong enough to overthrow them. An alliance with the coalition enabled them to get rid of AQI. If cash were the only incentive to stop attacking the coalition, how come this didn't happen in 2 or 3 years ago?

There is a section in the article about Turkey and the Kurds. It seems to me this is almost a separate issue. It exists regardless. But he suggests that the Awakening may make it worse. Why? The closest thing to an answer I can find in the article is if Turkey invades Kurdistan it "could well embolden the Sunni Arab insurgents to renew the war against the U.S. military." Why? Some of them accrued an advantage by stopping that fight, why throw it away by renewing it?

There are several "What if this happens? What then?" arguments in the article that don't tell us why "this" is likely to happen.

I think too much is made of common religious affiliation. He states Turkey "is the natural leader of the Sunni Muslim world." Why? Turks aren't Arabs. They ruled over large parts of Arabia for a long time and the Arabs didn't like it. And why should the Gulf states look to a country without a big navy for protection?

He states also that "Islam is inextricably intertwined with Turkish identity, culture and history." Yes it is. So is secularism, especially in the Turkish military. To mention the one without mentioning the other seems like cherry picking.

Near as I can figure, his main argument is we should get out of Iraq quick or things will probably go bad. But from everything else I read, the stronger argument seems to be if we get out of Iraq quick, things absolutely will go bad.

But again, my primary objection to the article is the carping about the "Awakening". The men on the spot played the hand they were dealt brilliantly to achieve a good result, at least up to now. If COL. MacGregor is going to caution us about this, he should at least suggest what should have been done instead.

[Cavguy]

This article is a very great puzzlement to me.

COL. MacGregor seems to decry the "Anbar Awakening" but what was the alternative to the men on the spot at the time? They adroitly took advantage of a political rift, a big one, in the Sunni community and induced the tribes to overtly join with the coalition forces to mostly destroy AQI; an AQI that was, contrary to a statement in the article, almost wholly composed of Iraqi, not foreign fighters.

From what I've read there is much more too this than cash payments to sheiks. In Ramadi at least, AQI was very much disliked but the tribes weren't strong enough to overthrow them. An alliance with the coalition enabled them to get rid of AQI. If cash were the only incentive to stop attacking the coalition, how come this didn't happen in 2 or 3 years ago? .... If COL. MacGregor is going to caution us about this, he should at least suggest what should have been done instead.

"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the
strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better.
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face
is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs
and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without
error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great
devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best,
knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the
worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his
place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither
victory nor defeat."
Theodore Roosevelt
Source:Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910

Couldn't resist one of my favorite quotes. Thanks for the lead in. Hopefully I will be able to answer some of the questions addressed soon - COL MacFarland and I just finished the final edit of an article on the subject to be published in Military Review during the next months.

Carl captures the facts (from my seat) correctly regarding the Awakening. It was not about money, and money was not the instrument used to convince the tribes. Really it came down to interest and power (of which a component is money). Money was/is used to sustain the effort through reconstruction projects in areas friendly to coalition forces. Money is a weapon system as well, to be used judiciously.

When I first arrived in Baghdad in May 2003, you could hire an Iraqi laborer for $2/day, a king's ransom at the time. ($60/mo was 4x the average Iraqi's salary at the time). We tried to start employment programs (cleaning trash, repairs, etc) to employ the masses of unemployed, especially the poor Shia. We ran into roadblock after roadblock from CPA, who was opposed at New Deal style programs and scoffed at mass employment programs to otherwise occupy idle hands that may be recruited to the devil's work.

Flash forward to April-May 2004. My BN is killing these same poor, unemployed, uneducated Shia by the hundreds during the Sadr rebellion. In two months we expended over 200,000 rounds of 7.62, over 300 tank rounds, and an unbelievable amount of maintenance funds to sustain an Armor BN during a three month extension. For a fraction of those costs I could have employed several thousand people and addressed one of the root causes of the Sadr rebellion.

I know we can't directly correlate cause to effect on this, but I still believe that if we had employed the masses early we wouldn't have faced the Sadr problem, and worse, we knew that at the tactical level in 2003. Not even 20/20 hindsight, in my opinion.

I digress into the path of what might have been.

I am with Carl though - for the critics - what is the alternate COA that SHOULD have been done? Would an Anbar in chaos actually be of greater benefit to the USA than one at peace? I personally don't see how, and make no apologies for what we did. It was good for Iraq and good for the USA, and had transformative effects on Baghdad and Dialaya.

[Rank amateur]

I am with Carl though - for the critics - what is the alternate COA that SHOULD have been done? Would an Anbar in chaos actually be of greater benefit to the USA than one at peace? I personally don't see how, and make no apologies for what we did. It was good for Iraq and good for the USA, and had transformative effects on Baghdad and Dialaya.

I agree. You did an excellent job playing the hand dealt you. Professional poker players fold: frequently and quickly. Strategically, it seems to me that we just keep upping the ante.

[Uboat509]

Why was it not possible to extend the Anbar model to the rest of Sunni-held Iraq? Or did the generals in Baghdad begin cutting deals with the Sunni insurgents only when the mounting casualties from the surge in the spring and early summer of 2007 compelled them to do so?

As a matter of fact the Sawah has spread to other parts of Sunni Iraq. I know this for an absolute fact because I was there at the beginning. Granted it is not on the same scale as Anbar but then the realities on the ground are much different. I can't speak to the situation in Anbar, I haven't been there, but I have been in the North. Up there, the Sawah has arisen primarily in response to an ineffective/biased/corrupt military and police force. It was already showing some early successes when I left in October. It has been slow to get started in the North in part because of resistance by some US military comanders who do not understand tribalism and also some local political/tribal leaders who feel their power threatened by the Sawah.

By the way, can someone explain to me how Turkey is the is the "natural leader of the Sunni Muslim world"? Did I miss something? I have yet to hear an Arab say anything nice about the Turks. That would seem to be somewhat of an obstacle to "natural leadersip."

SFC W

[Ken White]

. . .
By the way, can someone explain to me how Turkey is the is the "natural leader of the Sunni Muslim world"? Did I miss something? I have yet to hear an Arab say anything nice about the Turks. That would seem to be somewhat of an obstacle to "natural leadersip."

SFC W

Turks are even more hated than the Iraniha. There is no leader of the Arab world because it is so fractured, every potential 'leader' has adverse historical events that preclude any leadership in that sense. Just look at all who've tried in the last 60 years or so to assume that position from Nasser forward -- all failed.

That's really good news of a sort, though we weren't smart enough to exploit it. The West finds the ME thought processes so very different they cannot get their arms around the monster. Few in the west are willing to accept that an entire nation will do something that is antithetical to itself out of pride or that the western art of compromise is seen as a glaring weakness in the ME...