How Are We Doing?

Since the inception of this blog, most of the content in this blog has been focused on the War Against Islamic Fascism. Due to range of falsehoods, misrepresentations, misunderstandings, and geneneral lack of historical perspective, I've spent most of my posts defending the execution of the war against the charges shrouded in this fog. However, although I've defended the War against these charges, which come in daily quantities as dense as a septic tank after all-you-can-eat-Chalupa-night at Taco Bell, I have never once argued for the flawlessness of what I otherwise consider a very well done job.

Bobby Bran wrote one of the best posts I have read to this date about what has gone right and wrong in the war. It was clear, analytical, extremely constructive and well-written. In it Bobby lays out the fundamental problems our military and political leaders have had in developing a solid counter-insurgency strategy. First he eloquently describes how force can be a necessary evil in conducting a successful strategy that captures the "hearts and minds" of the population effected by the insurgency:

...In fact, however, all wars actually require some mixture of kinetic action and the civil-military programs endorsed by Professor Elkins. In stability operations (such as a Bosnia or Kosovo) the battlefield might be heavy on the latter and light on the former; in a conventional war (like Korea or the Fulda Gap), the mixture might be opposite. And against an active insurgency (such as Malaya then or modern Iraq), the mixture probably falls somewhere in between, with kinetic action supporting civil-military operations. But, despite what Professor Elkins might believe, a "hearts and minds" strategy can and will include applied violence in support of political goals-- that's what war is all about-- and the reason is quite simple: as Machiavelli argued and tyrants have demonstrated throughout history, possessing the "hearts and minds" is not enough if your adversaries can still control their behavior through force and fear. Or as Texas A&M's Brian McAllister Linn noted in his fantastic book, the US Army and Counterinsurgency in the Philippine War, 1898-1902 (on my recommended reading list):

...Thus, under my (admittedly poor and untrained) conception of counterinsurgency history, the definition of "hearts and minds" includes some amount of violent action to have established the conditions that make the people's "hearts and minds" relevant in the first place. Under Professor Elkins's conception, however, the repressive behavior of the British represents a mockery of their "hearts and minds" rhetoric. (In fairness, Professor Elkins is an African studies scholar whose research is critical of British detention and forced migratory policy in Kenya, and some of her critique in Malaya may stem from her greater knowledge of British colonial and post-colonial policy in Africa). I'm not saying I'm right and she is wrong-- the beauty of "Big Fish" is that the individual viewer gets to make his/her own interpretation-- but I will argue that a campaign designed to win "hearts and minds" without establishing at least rudimentary control over that population will absolutely fail against an enemy who is asserting that control.

Then he points out the weaknesses and mistakes our military has made in effectively implementing a solid "hearts and minds" strategy:

There's two points to this one. First, if there are colonels-- at the War College, no less-- who truly do not understand that when the crucial linkage of tactics supporting operations that support strategy breaks down, then strategic objectives are unlikely to be realized... well, then the Army's in a lot worse shape than even I had thought. But I would venture that this is likely more of an exception than the norm. Secondly, Biddle is absolutely correct that "Strategy is the occupation of a very few in the Army" and there is an institutional reason for this: the vast majority of Army officers spend their time in tactical-level units: platoons, company command, battalion staff, brigade staff; in an Army officer's first fifteen years, he will likely spend two to three years in school, and at least six to eight years in a tactical-level unit. Time spent away is as likely to be spent in a non-tactical environment (a functional area, a training and doctrine assignment, or recruiting) as it is to be spent in an operational or strategic-level assignment. And even those majors or lieutenant-colonels who do spend a year or two on a general staff are likely to focus their attention in one narrow field (personnel, logistics, plans, etc.), giving them a deep amount of expertise in this field, but little holistic comprehension of strategy and operations. And when the end state of all these assignments is to go back to a tactical assignment (battalion/brigade operations officer or executive officer, and eventually battalion command), then there's just not the incentive to learn strategy. Until the Army recognizes this, and provides officers with the opportunity and incentive to think strategic, it will continue to be left only to those officers-- the Jay Dymeks, Tom Jagusches, and Mike Prevous-- who are personally interested, and choose to study it on their own. Again, an organizational change that has long been needed.

...I've been saying a lot of this for quite some time now, but it bears repeating here: an attrition-based strategy that relies almost exclusively upon finding and killing the enemy will not win this kind of war; victory requires an effects-based, intelligence-driven gameplan that subordinates kinetic operations to information operations, and targets the enemy's strategy, not just the insurgents themselves. Killing insurgents is necessary, but it's also meaningless if it's not supporting an appropriate strategy-- we simply cannot kill the insurgents as fast or as effectively as the enemy will regenerate them. And if we go down that route, then rest assured that it's what we will still be doing decades from now-- if, that is, we haven't already lost the popular will to continue the fight (and that's a really big if). This is a recurring problem, not just for inflexible Army doctrine and culture, but even in the business world: in Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman's First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently, they note that sub-optimal organizations have a tendency to "let the creed overshadow the message."

It is objectively true that the United States has been enormously effective at killing and beating insurgents on the battlefield. Whether it has been house-to-house operations, brigade-level operations, intelligence driven strategic strikes, counter-IED ops, etc., our boys on the ground have soundly handled an extremely tenacious, bloodthirsty and ruthless group of professional terrorizers with flexibility and creativity. However, the end-game, for quite a while after the initial invasion, was unclear--no one quite knew what would constitute a win? We had never been in such a war before, so it was difficult to clearly define exactly what this was (I'm sure the last thing any decision-maker wanted was to display the equivalent of appearing on an aircraft carrier with Mission Accomplished in the background, only to the monster reanimate and strike again).

While we wandered in the desert in search of a strategy to articulate, our enemies and critics of the war seized on this opportunity to define their terms of success on the war. The enemy understood the media and the information game far better than we did.

Bobby explained what you need to do to defeat such an enemy. First, you have to apply (not just display) force, and demonstrate through your actions not just to the terrorists, but to the population, that not only are you willing to take the gloves off and fight bare fisted until the last man is standing, but that you are also going to stick around and make sure that no one comes back into the ring without having to pay for it.

Late this summer, our military engaged in what was a perfect example of this doctrine. The Anbar Campaign in Western Iraq was a series of operations designed to cut the flow of assets (weapons, terrorists & money) primarily along the Euphrates from Syria into Bagdad. It began as a series of sweeps with little ground being held, but eventually turned into U.S. forces conducting primarily offensive sweeps, while newly training Iraqi security forces came in, held ground and restored order. By the end of the campaign, some Iraqi forces were actually engaging in offensive and defensive operations.

However successful these operations were, the most important part of this were the information operations that were conducted from the President all the way down. It specifically targeted all the canards the Western media was feeding the American public, while also demonstrated to Iraqis that we have a vested interest in seeing the terrorists lose. It is still a war of attrition, but one where we have finally picked up the microphone and decided to fight back not just with JDAMs and Abrams, but with words.

The terrorists have lost. They have been swept from most of the strongholds within Iraq, they've succeeding in turning the vast majority of Iraqis against them, and they still haven't been able to significantly affect any results on the actual battlefield. Their attacks are still predominantly focused on creating big media events, but mostly against civilians and soft targets. The third election in Iraq had participation from all major ethnic groups, and was largely free from any major terrorist attacks. The newly elected government in Iraq will convene shortly, and we'll wait and see how Iraqis run their democracy.

We are still going to see attacks from terrorists, but they are demonstrating they are incapable of sustaining attacks for any length of time. They have nothing to lose and they don't understand anything other response other than violence. But, the U.S. is not in danger of having to pull their troops out prematurely, and the Iraqi Security Forces are gaining in strength everyday. Soon, American soldiers will start coming home and it will not be because of a "pull-out," it will be because Iraq is standing on its own feet and dealing with its terrorist problem itself.

Our ultimate success will hinge on how our leaders communicate this fact to the public and to the world. The skeptics will always be there, but ultimately they are going to have to make a pretty specious case if they want to oppose those communicating the actual success on the ground in Iraq. So my advice to our leadership is to keep the information operations at the forefront and don't let up!