Another Reading from the Book of COIN: Iraq...

Adam L. Silverman, PhD*

Yesterday reports came in that there were two more bombings in Iraq that killed at least twenty four people.  While sporadic violence, if not escalating violence, is to be expected as the various divisions and factions, including the sectarian, continue to jockey for position and resource, the strategic failure that we leave behind in Iraq is directly tied to COL Lang's post from earlier today about Afghanistan.

In November of 2009 COL Lang and I were both panelists and participants at New York University's Center on Law and Security's Counterinsurgency: America's Strategic Burden conference.  I was on the first panel on COIN Theory and Applications.  COL Lang on a later panel dealing with the history of COIN.  Everyone else on my panel had been key contributors to FM 3-24 (Undersecretary of Defense Davidson, Dr. McFate, Dr. Crane, and LTC Nagl)**.  I was not part of that endeavor, but have contributed revisions to several related field manuals since then.  When LTC Nagl gave his remarks he zeroed right onto the upcoming Iraqi elections.  He stated they would go smoothly (they didn't), that when the new government was seated we would be able to negotiate a proper status of forces agreement and that would allow us to keep large numbers of troops in Iraq for an extended period.  I was looking out at the audience and I can only say that no description of COL Lang's expression would do it justice.  Needless to say, as the WaPo story about the bombing indicates, there will not be an extension of any significant number of US forces under the current government (and I do NOT consider 10K or so to be a significant number if that's the number of forces left to do security force advising) as the Sadrists will bring down the governing coalition.  Here's the link to the conference page and there's supposed to be video links that work at the bottom:

http://www.lawandsecurity.org/law-and-security-conferences/vw/3/itemid/61/d/20091120

(full embarrassment disclosure: I had a Freudian slip in my remarks - I was referring to a French friend whose father had been a French general.  She is several years older than me and once got very emotional while visiting and watching a documentary on Vichy France and how they did not teach that in school when she was a girl.  While referring to her being older I intended to say: as its not polite to give a Lady's age I do not want to provide a date for her and it came out as "I don't want to date her" my mouth got ahead of the brain...)

* Adam L. Silverman is the Culture and Foreign Language Advisor at the US Army War College.  The views expressed here are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of the US Army War College or the US Army

** Full Disclosure: I used to work with and for Dr. McFate as she was one of my two supervisors when I served on the PM's staff of the Army's Human Terrain System, the other COL Fondacaro was also a panelist later in the day.  Dr. Crane is now a professional colleague at the US Army War College, this event was the first time I met him.

Comments

[[email protected]]

I think this comment I made earlier remains relevant to our overall leadership problem, including the misguided belief in COIN:

We need intelligent, capable leaders able to effectively manage the civil-military equation with which we are perpetually confronted. I just came back from a conference in China in which I emphasized the crucial importance of the human factor in balancing the civil-military equation (basing decisions on wargaming the possible/probable positive/negative results and not necessarily on preconceived notions and desires). As I see it, we have reached a seriously dangerous crossroads in American history with an economic blunder attributable to both parties, a meaningless war in Iraq attributable to the Republican Party but also lacking intelligent opposition by the Democrats, and an essentially wasteful effort in Afghanistan due to a serious failure to stand up and admit the essential meaninglessness of floundering about in a bottomless pit of corruption that will never be resolved by outsiders like us. When will we learn? Looking back, failure to effectively war game the situation in Vietnam resulted in our involvement there as well. Come on! Where are leaders who really care about about America and who have the guts to speak up and attempt to act based on facts and realistic assessments rather than appearances (Red Menace, etc.)? And let us get Civics ( in the form of the civil-military balance of factors) included in or public education system. We cannot afford to continue in our current, ignorant direction! We have so-called civilian leaders who don't stand up to demand that our system be adhered to when making decisions, including demands to get valid intelligence directly from those designated to provide it, we have military yes-men who push flawed COIN concepts rather than stand up and say "Sir, I think we should not do this because..." and the list goes on. Wake up America!!!