After Action
Small Wars Journal has McCaffrey’s Dec. 18 AAR on Iraq. It’s a good news, bad news thing. But even the bad news has some good news salted in it. Some highlights from SWJ’s highlights and thoughts on same:
Violence Down Dramatically – The struggle for stability in the Iraqi Civil War has entered a new phase …
Al Qaeda Tactically Defeated and Trying to Regenerate – … but are trying to re-constitute in the north and along Syrian frontier. The Iraqi people have turned on AQI because it overreached …. Most border-crossers are suicide bombers who are dead within four days while carrying out largely ineffective attacks on the civilian population and the Iraqi Police.
Iraqi Security Forces Key Factor in Successful Internal Security – … The previously grossly ineffective and corrupt Iraqi Police have been forcefully re-trained and re-equipped. The majority of their formerly sectarian police leadership has been replaced … The embedded US training teams have simply incredible levels of trust and mutual cooperation with their Iraqi counterparts. Corruption remains endemic. However, much remains to be done. This is the center-of-gravity of the war.
Extremely critical progress that I would mark as much political as security-related, for those who are ready to toss in the towel on the political excuse.
Central Government Does Not Work – There is no functional central Iraqi Government. Incompetence, corruption, factional paranoia, and political gridlock have paralyzed the state … Elections for provincial government are vitally important to creating any possible form of functioning Iraqi state.
He also calls al-Maliki a political non-entity, without powerbase. Iraq’s best political hope may in fact lie in a local, grassroots political upsurge. Much as we’ve seen security improvements boosted by a local and indigenous movement spreading out from Anbar province, so might political reconciliation and progress, some kind of homegrown democratic governance, arise from the lower levels. Why? Read on …
Population and Refugees in Misery – 4-million plus Iraqi refugees, many of the intelligentsia and professional class have fled to Syria, Jordan or further abroad. In Iraq, medical care is primitive, clean water and adequate food is lacking, and security and justice for the individual Iraqi is weak …. The people (and in particular the women) are sick of the chaotic violence and want an end to the unpredictable violence and the dislocation of the population.
Wherein lies the best hope for resolution, and a significant underpinning of the current improved state of affairs. Always pay attention to what the women want.
Economy Showing Signs of Coming Back – The economy is slowly reviving, although there is 50% or more unemployment or under-employment … The Iraqi currency to everyone’s astonishment is very stable and more valued than the weak US dollar …
U.S. Combat Forces Now Dominating the Civil War - These combat forces have become the most effective counterinsurgency (and forensic police investigative service) in history … Their aggressive tactics combined with simply brilliant use of the newly energized Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRT’s — Superb State Department leadership and participation) for economic development have dramatically changed the tone of the war.
I remember a skeptical foreign friend four years ago telling me the United States doesn’t do counter-insurgency well. Like most other things, it comes down to whether the United States wants to do counter-insurgency well or not.
Sunni Arabs Want Back In, Before U.S. Forces Depart - … and to position themselves for the next phase of the Civil War when the US Forces withdraw.
Shia Arabs Holding in Ceasefire, Struggle for Internal Power - The Shia JAM militia … are giving up rogue elements to be harvested by US Special Operations teams, and are consolidating control over their ethnic cleansing success in Baghdad—as well as maneuvering to dominate the Iranian affiliated Badr brigade forces in the south …
Dominance of Criminal Elements - … It is difficult to separate either Shia or Sunni political factions from Mafia criminal elements– with a primary focus on looting the government financial system and oil wealth of the nation …
The Kurds, an Autonomous Successful Region - The Kurds are a successful separate autonomous state with a functioning and rapidly growing economy, a strong military (Both existing Pesh Merga Forces and nominally Iraqi-Kurdish Army divisions), a free press, relative security, significant foreign investment, and a growing tourist industry which serves as a neutral and safe meeting place for separated and terrified Sunni and Shia Arab families from the south.
The Way Ahead
The Central U.S. Military Focus Must be to Create Adequate Iraqi Security Forces - The Iraqis are the key variable … It is evident that the American people have no continued political commitment to solving the Iraqi Civil War. The US Armed Forces cannot for much longer impose an internal skeleton of governance and security on 27 million warring people.
I’m not sure that issue of American will has been settled yet. We have a year and an election to go. Meanwhile, U.S. military expansion continues … though not nearly as much or as fast as it should … and combined with a moderate, facts-based drawdown could signfiicantly ease pressure on the military. Re expansion:
The U.S. Army is too Small and Poorly Resourced to Continue Successful Counterinsurgency Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan at the Current Level - An active counter-insurgency campaign in Iraq could probably succeed in the coming decade with twenty-five US Brigade Combat Teams. (Afghanistan probably needs two more US combat brigades for a total of four in the coming 15 year campaign to create an operational state— given more robust NATO Forces and ROE). We can probably sustain a force in Iraq indefinitely (given adequate funding) of some 10+ brigades. However, the US Army is starting to unravel.
Healing the Moral Fissures in the Armed Forces - The leadership of Secretary Bob Gates in DOD has produced a dramatic transformation of our national security effort which under the Rumsfeld leadership was characterized by: a failing under-resourced counter-insurgency strategy; illegal DOD orders on the abuse of human rights; disrespect for the media and the Congress and the other departments of government; massive self-denial on wartime intelligence; and an internal civilian-imposed integrity problem in the Armed Forces—that punished candor, de-centralized operations, and commanders initiative …
Rumsfeld, despite being briefly popular for his yeoman’s work as a media-bashing loudmouth, will go down in history as someone stuck on stupid: his vision of a 1990s whiz-bang faster-cheaper-lighter military that wasn’t ready to handle multiple large-scale counter-insurgencies, and for shutting out people who suggested there was more to be done post-9/11 than simply topple regimes. He deserves praise for the can-do attitude that led to the rapid destruction of both the Taliban and Saddam, at a time when many naysayers were predicting disaster and quagmire just in the efforts to remove hostile regimes. In fairness, none of these jobs were going to be easy.* But his can-do attitude was unfortunately coupled with arrogance and a failure to recognize that there might be other issues to address, and followthrough was sorely lacking. That led to four years of stalmate and death that might have been better contained in Iraq, and it may be partly responsible for the Taliban’s resurgence in Afghanistan. In Iraq, it is necessary to note that a sectarian bloodletting was inevitable, while Afghanistan was involved in decades of power struggles before we got there, and is a long-term project in which development and counter-insurgency and security have to go hand in had. OK, off the soapbox.
The End Game
It is too late to decide on the Iraqi exit strategy with the current Administration. However, the Secretary of Defense and CENTCOM can set the next Administration up for success by getting down to 12 + Brigade Combat teams before January of 2009 —and by massively resourcing the creation of an adequate Iraqi Security Force.
We also need to make the case to Congress that significant US financial resources are needed to get the Iraqi economy going. ($3 billion per year for five years.) The nation-building process is the key to a successful US Military withdrawal—and will save enormous money and grief in the long run to avoid a failed Iraqi state.
Clearly we must continue the current sensible approach by Secretary of State Rice to open dialog with Syria, Turkey, and the Iranians—and to focus Arab attention with Saudi leadership on a US diplomatic offensive to mitigate the confrontation between Israel and the Arab states. We must also build a coalition to mitigate the dangers of a nuclear armed Iran.
The dysfunctional central government of Iraq, the warring Shia/Sunni/Kurdish factions, and the unworkable Iraqi constitution will only be put right by the Iraqis in their own time—and in their own way. It is entirely credible that a functioning Iraqi state will slowly emerge from the bottom up…with a small US military and diplomatic presence holding together in loose fashion the central government. The US must also hold at bay Iraq’s neighbors from the desperate mischief they might cause that could lead to all out Civil War with regional involvement.
A successful withdrawal from Iraq with the emergence of a responsible unified Iraqi nation is vitally important to the security of the American people and the Mid-East. We are clearly no longer on a downward spiral. However, the ultimate outcome is still quite seriously in doubt.
There you have it, from McCaffrey, oft-cited darling of the Bush-bashing classes. I’d call that a carefully couched stay-the-course message. A lot of it comes down to what you mean by a successful withdrawal from Iraq. Three key parts to that sentence. “Successful,” “withdrawal” and “from Iraq.” I’d suggest that achieving the other goals he cites of regional stability and containment will require a long-term U.S. strategic presence of the sort the Bush administration and the Iraqi government have tentatively agreed to, with the U.S. largely withdrawn from Iraqi internal security issues once they have been successfully passed on to the Iraqis.
Note that McCaffrey doesn’t buy the notion that Iran as a nuclear problem has been magically disappeared. With regard to Iraq, Iran and the entire region, any idea that the United States military can pull up stakes and go home is absurd.
Here’s WaPo reporting gloom in McCaffrey’s March ‘07 report, and Newsbusters, busting WaPo.
* I never foresaw the kind of problems the United States encountered in Iraq, but then I didn’t know how ill-prepared we were for the aftermath. Two quick anecdotes:
In the desert in March 2003, in the quiet of an evening before a combat assault, a captain pointed to the M1A1 Abrams tanks and the M4 rifles, and said, “In five years the Iraqi Army will be driving tanks like this and carrying rifles like this.” My friend Capt. Wolford in fact may not be far off. They’re driving leftover Saddam-era Russian APCs and carrying AKs, but the Iraqi Army as stripped down and built back up by the United States is finally coming on line in a serious way. I told Wolford at the time, “What we’re doing now is the easy part. The hard part comes after.” I said creating a pro-U.S. Arab democracy will be no easy job, and the U.S. government is more like a supertanker than the speedboat needed for the task.
The first glimmer of trouble came several weeks later. Wolford’s A Company had led the assault on the palaces in downtown Baghdad, and 4/64 battalion commander LTC Philip deCamp had his headquarters in the Republican Palace, now the U.S. embassy in the Green Zone. We were talking about the looting, and deCamp said something to the effect of: We’re not here to act as a police force. We don’t have the men or the training for that. That will be handled by the follow-on occupation force. At the time, in fact, deCamp said that nearly half the battalion’s tanks were down and he didn’t expect to be given the assault on Tikrit, if it came to that.
That turned out not to be the case, and the warfighters who expected to go home in a few weeks, their equipment battered and soldiers tired, were extended several times over the next five months. The 3rd ID’s after-action in the fall of 2003 noted with some bureaucratically and subordinately subdued bitterness that the division’s combat forces had not been tasked and subsequently were not prepared for police and civil reconstruction duty on what turned out to be a mammoth scale.
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 8:19 am on Wednesday, December 19, 2007
3 Responses to “After Action”
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December 19th, 2007 at 10:27 am
“The U.S. Army is too Small and Poorly Resourced to Continue Successful Counterinsurgency Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan at the Current Level”. I’m glad this is being brought to light. The road to stability in Iraq and Afghanistan is a long hard slog, and we can’t continue to do it with such a small percentage of our nation’s population. The Petraeus strategy is working, but the “quick fix” that the politicans are looking for before the ‘09 election is never going to happen. Thanks Mr. Crittenden, you’re feedback on this AAR is truthful, insightful, and not wrought with a bunch of pundit-like stupidity.
December 19th, 2007 at 2:07 pm
I’d feel better about it all if we had some serious people running for office–on both sides. Congress, Republicans and Democrats, remind me of the pre-revolution English parliament that was more focused on how to bring in more revenue and extend their personal power bases than seriously addressing the problems with the colonies. Now isn’t the time to take our eyes off the ball.
December 21st, 2007 at 2:25 am
saltydog:
On the left side of the political offerings, there wont be anything or anyone of any value to any but our enemy in this war. The DNC is too heavily infested with ’60s radical leftardic wannabee revolutionaries to allow anyone of actual honor and/or integrity to get anywhere near powerful in that party.
On the right side, there’s been much decay and disruption from the usual craptastic idjits drawn to political power but there’s still some remaining function in that program, if just barely.
Have you looked at all at Duncan Hunter or Fred Thompson?
There will always be weak points to any politico. Part of being human and part of being a politico. But both those do tend more toward the stable end of the spectrum and, so far, seem to be pretty consistent.