O captains, our captains

By now, you've probably read the "12 captains" opinion piece in the Washington Post. If you haven't read it, you should. The rank of these officers puts them in an unusually authoritative position to comment on the Iraq war.

Counterinsurgency is, by nature, small-unit warfare. At the operational level of strategy, most techniques of conventional warfare--for example, massed forces, maximum firepower, high mobility--don't apply. To clear out guerrillas, including their political and intelligence networks, you need to operate at a face-to-face level with the local population, instead of standing off and blasting away at the enemy's military forces. Without good leadership at the lower end of the chain of command, you'll never earn the trust of the local population. Without that trust, you'll never be able to detect and uproot the local guerrilla organization, which generally operates in small, distributed cells, instead of big, obvious, easily-targeted units.

There's a natural temptation, as the counterinsurgent army, to use your own ability to concentrate your strength to crush these small cells. However, if the guerrillas have survived for any length of time, they've already learned how to disperse when attacked. Chances are, after a few initial successes, the surviving guerrillas will have moved away. Larger-unit operations present that many more opportunities for security failures, tipping off the guerrillas of the impending attack.

More to the point, "big unit sweeps" may temporarily clear an area of guerrilla fighters, but it doesn't necessarily secure the region from the insurgents. While you're busy shooting up the landscape, elements of the guerrilla organization have gone underground. Even if you manage to kill a significant number of guerrilla fighters, the rest of the organization will remain, ready to regenerate its strength with new recruits. It might be easy to find these recruits, if the "big unit sweep" results in civilian casualties, property damage, torture, and other outcomes likely to radicalize people. Uprooting the guerrillas for good means living with the local population for a long, long time, instead of zigzagging across the map, chasing down every report of guerrilla sightings.

Therefore, the military onus for counterinsurgency falls on smaller military units, platoons and companies, instead of the bigger units, such as battalions and divisions. The "area of operations" assigned to platoons (30-50 soldiers) and companies (100-200 soldiers) are normally village, hamlet, or big city neighborhood. That's just the right size to build trust, gain intimate knowledge of the people and events in a community, and develop the sense of responsibility for that community's welfare. Platoon and company commanders frequently need logistical, intelligence, and fire support from the larger units of which they are part. However, at the all-important operational level, counterinsurgency depends more on lieutenants and captains than colonels and generals.

If the lieutenants and captains are telling you that the war in Iraq is going badly, believe them. The 12 captains behind the Washington Post opinion piece were deployed in different regions of Iraq, so you can't dismiss them by saying, "Well, you know, maybe things were bad in Ramadi, but in Basra..." Throughout Iraq, the view from the platoon and company perspective is bad:

Iraq's institutional infrastructure, too, is sorely wanting. Even if the Iraqis wanted to work together and accept the national identity foisted upon them in 1920s, the ministries do not have enough trained administrators or technicians to coordinate themselves. At the local level, most communities are still controlled by the same autocratic sheiks that ruled under Saddam. There is no reliable postal system. No effective banking system. No registration system to monitor the population and its needs.

While we might argue over the correct response to this picture, it's hard to argue with the picture itself.

Comments

[WMK]

Critics of the Bush war policy and plan (justifiably) argue that the administration ignored the actual context on the ground in Saddam's Iraq and, driven by a singular vision, marched ahead. Now the situation is reversed. The opinion piece in question, written by former Army Captains, captures to a degree the situation in Iraq between 2003 and 2005 (with one exception in 2006).

"This column was written by 12 former Army captains: Jason Blindauer served in Babil and Baghdad in 2003 and 2005. Elizabeth Bostwick served in Salah Ad Din and An Najaf in 2004. Jeffrey Bouldin served in Al Anbar, Baghdad and Ninevah in 2006. Jason Bugajski served in Diyala in 2004. Anton Kemps served in Babil and Baghdad in 2003 and 2005. Kristy (Luken) McCormick served in Ninevah in 2003. Luis Carlos Montalván served in Anbar, Baghdad and Nineveh in 2003 and 2005. William Murphy served in Babil and Baghdad in 2003 and 2005. Josh Rizzo served in Baghdad in 2006. William "Jamie" Ruehl served in Nineveh in 2004. Gregg Tharp served in Babil and Baghdad in 2003 and 2005. Gary Williams served in Baghdad in 2003."

Their view no doubt represents memories of experiences as intense as any soliders but that was a much different war. The war in late 2007 is very different from their war in terms of strategy, tactics, the specific enemy, and most importantly, the nature of the interaction with a growing segment of the population.

If an argument is going to be made about the continued policy in Iraq we would all do well to base it on current conditions not just history.

[J.]

"If an argument is going to be made about the continued policy in Iraq we would all do well to base it on current conditions not just history."

WMK - History? You make it sound like these captains are talking about the first Gulf War in 1991. The Surge(TM) may have temporarily helped settle Baghdad down, but you cannot say authoritatively that the conflict has turned the corner. The situation has not changed significantly in two years, nor have the tactics or the specific enemy. All that changed was the number of troops and the arrival of a more politically sensitive general officer.

if you look at my blog post on the same subject (http://armchairgeneralist.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/10/army-captains-s.html),
you'll find a link near the bottom of the post by a soldier who WAS there in 2007. Read it. He's not very optimistic about moving the ball forward, and I'll bet he has lots of company. The war hasn't changed at all, it's still an insurgency - the only thing that's changed is who's on "our side" today (but maybe not tomorrow).

[WMK]

J. I have no doubt that there are a lot of folks who can point to what has not changed since early summer 2007, however the overwhelming weight of data and opinion amoung soldiers in Iraq says they are in the minority. I speak to a LOT of soldiers who are in theater and who have retured during the past few months. The overwhelming opinion is that on the whole there has been a significant change in Iraq. This is still an insurgency, this is still a war, and it is not over yet. Ask anyone who has served in this kind of combat zone and they will tell you that, at the tactical level, that being shot at erases all distinctions of intensity of war or sense of relative safety. Ask any beat cop from a dangerous part of a large US city town about the crime situation in city as a whole and I suspect you will get a pretty negative picture. The cop is not wrong in the narrow sense but he is also far from the best source of information for the overall situation. If you don't want to see what changed in the last 8 months then any source of information is as good as any other. The strategy is fundamentaly different and it is in part responsible for a very positive shift in the conditions across the country. All I am saying is that making decisions on what should be done (to include when and how to depart) should not be based on dated and narrow opinions. For a very clear articulation of the current strategy and why it is making a difference see http://www.iht.com/bin/print.php?id=7807571 (Dave Killcullen interviewd by Charlie Rose)