From time to time it pays to take a look at the keywords used to bring visits to a site (when those visits are neither direct nor referrals).  I use Google Analytics for this task, among other things.  The search word strings yesterday were typical of a Milblog site.

1. “Spartan body armor.”  A Google search on the words “Spartan 2 tactical vest” yields TCJ just below Tactical Applications Group, the company that produces the Spartan body armor system, because of our body armor coverage.  “SAPI plates” is also a frequent search word string (you may not become famous by being a Milblogger, but at least you get tired, the hours are long and the words sound important).
2. “Jaish al-Mahdi army.”  This makes sense, since a Google search puts TCJ third for our article The Rise of the JAM.
3. “Are soldiers allowed to buy their own equipment?”  This is understandable as well, since page two of Google results lists Gear and Equipment Problems for the Marines.  Of course, this reader would have left disappointed and perhaps perplexed, since the answer is an unqualified maybe but probably not with qualifications, caveats, and stipulations enough to drive the sensible person mad, as if a lawyer wrote the rules … Hmmmm … a new theory hatches!
4. Variations on “rules of engagement,” “rules of engagement in Iraq,” “rules of engagement causing casualties,” “rules of engagement a hindrance,” “cjcsi 3121.01b,” etc., for our rules of engagement coverage.  Of course, these hits also bring in the person who is attempting to find engagement cards for their loved ones.
5. “Ansar al Sunna,” for our equivalent category.  I might remark on how forgiving search engines are, since the dual spellings (Sunna vs. Sunnah) are irrelevant.

And so the list goes.  It becomes an interesting little exercise.  But once in a while I stumble on a word string that grabs my attention so thoroughly that I cannot stop thinking about it until I unravel the mystery (I have not yet).

“Why shouldn’t we lie to NCOs?”  Now, take note of the fact that this isn’t formed thusly: “Why we shouldn’t lie to NCOs.”  No, it reads just “[w]hy shouldn’t we …”  This is particularly problematic, since we don’t know the rank of the individual searching on this word string.  Perhaps the chap had one too many pints of beer before searching on these words (did I give the country away?).  Or perhaps not.  Perhaps he is UA and needs an excuse for coming back late for formation.  Or perhaps rather than an enlisted man, he is an officer and wants to talk himself into lying to his subordinates.  Or perhaps he is an NCO searching for a reason for his subordinates not to be dishonest with him (Based on what I know of NCOs, this theory makes the least sense. An NCO would not search for a reason for his subordinates to respect him – he would simply demand it.).

Until this chap tells us why he wants to lie to an NCO, we cannot help him with his problem.  And just to set the record straight, at TCJ we do not support lying to NCOs.

We have previously covered Operation Alljah in and around the Fallujah area of operations, involving robust kinetic operations around Fallujah in May and early June, gated communities, interaction with the population, parnership with the Iraqi police, and the use of biometrics for identification of the population.  Bill Ardolino is embedded with the 2nd Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment and is reporting from Fallujah.

Operation Alljah was the latest and most successful bid to achieve security in the former insurgent stronghold of Fallujah, marrying projection of force with aggressive civil affairs outreach.

We have argued for more than a year that force projection is usually inversely related to the actual need to use that force, something the British got very wrong in Basra.  We have also argued for the proper involvement of NGOs and rebuilding and reconstruction (water, sewage, electricity) as an integral part of effective counterinsurgency.  Continuing:

During the operation, the city was subdivided into 10 neighborhoods in efforts dubbed “the swarm,” a coordinated series of counterinsurgency components: US troops and Iraqi Security Forces rolled into a neighborhood and established security, cordoned it off with concrete barrier checkpoints, created a local police precinct, recruited a neighborhood watch, provided employment for day laborers, conducted an information campaign to inform the citizenry of the operation, arbitrated any claims against Iraqi or US forces, distributed food and began meetings with neighborhood leaders to address infrastructure concerns.

Heavy engagement of the population was the hallmark of Operation Alljah.  But while the tribes were of paramount importance in Ramadi, the engagement of this operation specifically targeted a heretofore neglected constituency.

“When we got here, there was a sheik’s council. But in [the actual city of)] Fallujah, you can’t have a sheik’s council, because they have [Muktars, who are] like city sheiks. Fallujah is not divided by tribes, like in Ramadi. So when we were doing the sheik’s council, we were going nowhere, because the sheiks didn’t know the people … until we started noticing the Muktars. They were like, ‘What about us? How come nobody’s talking to us?'” explained 5/10 CAG Staff Sergeant Mauricio Piedrahita.

“So we started talking to them. They are like block captains who go back to the Saddam days. He’s in charge of a neighborhood. He knows everyone inside that neighborhood. They’re official positions appointed by the government. We do contracting for projects through them, because they know who to employ, because they know ‘Hey, I’m not gonna employ this guy because he’s from another district, he needs to be employed by his own (neighborhood).’ So this way we ensure that everyone is getting a fair amount of contracts and the projects and jobs are being distributed around the district.”

Engaging Muktars and backing their authority has succeeded where past civil affairs strategies have failed. Projects are now more in line with the needs of the community, and the decentralization of contracting has mitigated serious problems with corruption. During these meetings, the Muktars outline the most pressing infrastructure needs for the district: power (generators), fuel, water and sewage.

Bill marks this operation with a counterinsurgency exclamation point.  “[The Marines and IP] are not kicking down doors, they knock on the door, they give them time for the women and children to go into a room, they’ll talk to the man of the house, so it’s a different attitude,” said SSG Piedrahita” … Some marines complain about the “boring” nature of the civil affairs focus, while others embrace it.  “It’s a change,” said SSG Piedrahita. “But like they say, we’re marines, we adapt to anything. We’re always going to do the job as best we can. Like these guys, the 2/6, are all grunts, all infantrymen. They get trained to kill, in combat, and then we get this and we adapt to it and do the best we can. In a way, it’s good. We’re not getting Marines killed out here.”  There has been a certain learned aspect to this operation, and the results have been recognized all the way up to the Commandant of the Marine Corps, who has visited Foward Operating Base Reaper.

1st Lt. Barry Edwards summarizes the conclusion of the operation, by saying that “Iraqi Security Forces and U. S. Marines concluded major activities associated with Operation Alljah, Sept. 6, having curbed the murder and intimidation threat imposed by al Qaeda and improved the security posture in Fallujah.  The operation, which began May 29, was carried out by the Fallujah police; soldiers from the 2nd Brigade, 1st Iraqi Army Division; and Marines from Regimental Combat Team 6, throughout the course of 10 iterations to set conditions for Iraqi police control within the city of Fallujah.  The improved security picture in the city has allowed the Iraqi Army to withdraw, leaving the Iraqi Police in full control of enforcement of the rule of law.”

In an interesting recapitulation of “what’s wrong with this picture,” in Saqlawiyah, 1/1 Marines (of RCT-6) have targeted weapons caches with success.

It was late morning when Pfc. Andrew D. Bear noticed the lone cinderblock in the middle of a field. There were no houses, no cement facilities, and no structures of any kind for hundreds of feet. It was just dirt, mud, weeds and the Marines of Company A, 1st Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, accompanied by local Iraqi policemen. To the Yorba-Linda, Calif., native, the cinderblock, sitting in the sun-baked mud, stuck out like a cockroach in a spoonful of oatmeal.

“Now, tell me why a cinderblock would be just sitting in the middle of this field, all by itself,

A pivotal figure in the “Anbar Awaklening” is fallen:

Abdul Sattar Abu Risha was the leader of an alliance of Sunni Arab tribes that rejected al-Qaeda because of its methods and worked with the US.

He was killed in a bomb attack near his home in Iraq’s western Anbar province.

Abu Risha was among a group of tribal leaders who met President George W Bush during his visit to Iraq last week.

“The sheikh’s car was totally destroyed by the explosion. Abu Risha was killed and two of his bodyguards were seriously wounded,” Ramadi police officer Ahmed Mahmoud al-Alwani told Reuters.

Later it was reported that both bodyguards had died.

Abu Risha was the leader of the Anbar Salvation Council, also known as the Anbar Awakening, an alliance of clans which sided with US forces and the Iraqi government in order to try to reclaim Anbar province from al-Qaeda.

More here.  This is not good news.  Sattar was a key figure in the turning of the Ramadi tribes against al Qaeda, rogue tribes and indigenous fighters who had joined the insurgency.  The hope and prayer is that in spite of this, the “Awakening” will live on and peace will come to this land.

Anbar has been a classical counterinsurgency campaign with a twist.  But in order to set the stage for the discussion, shall we consider the remote areas in the mountains of North and South Carolina?  Any boy who has been raised to drive the backroads and traipse the winding trails through these mountains knows that there are certain places one doesn’t go, and certain things one doesn’t do.

There remain moonshine stills, people avoiding revenue collectors, and general rogue elements who like to go to the little local bar and clean their shotguns while they drink.  Actually, they aren’t avoiding revenue collectors.  The collectors just don’t go up there, and they shouldn’t.  The adventuresome young one learns not to look too hard for trouble, and generally know who belongs where, and when.  Anything or anyone out of place means trouble – time to go for the gun and let the dogs loose.

It is probably the same way in the sprawling urban areas, and this concept is important for considerations in classical counterinsurgency doctrine.  An insurgency simply cannot survive without the willing acquiescence of the population, or at least the important and more powerful elements of the population.

Common sense, along with trusted communications from military personnel in the Anbar Province, convinced me to write Al Qaeda, Indigenous Sunnis and the Insurgency in Iraq, in which I claimed that much, if not most, of the insurgency was indigenous to Anbar.  Bill Ardolino gives us an interesting interview of an interpreter working with the U.S. forces, reporting directly from Anbar.  One interesting exchange took place that is relevant to this issue:

INDC: When I speak to Fallujans, many say that it was all outsiders causing the insurgency, but a lot of it was certainly driven by locals. What portion of the insurgency was really local? Most of it?

Leo: Yes.

INDC: So why are people afraid to say, “Yeah, we used to fight the Americans?

Reminding us of his statements regarding international intervention in Iraq’s affairs, Petraeus tells us once again that Iraq is part of a global problem.

In response to a question from Rep. Solomon Ortiz (D-Texas) on U.S. diplomatic initiatives in support of its military effort in Iraq, Petraeus told lawmakers that “You cannot win in Iraq solely in Iraq.”

Petraeus said “by and large” that “most of the foreign fighters” entering Iraq come from Saudi Arabia, North Africa, and “other countries in the region.”

Petraeus talked about U.S. efforts to persuade other regional governments to block these individuals from getting into Iraq, but added “more needs to be done.”

W. Thomas Smith, Jr., has yet another great article, this one timely and encouraging.  It concerns religion on the front lines.  An excerpt follows:

… Combat soldiers and Marines prayed openly and unashamedly, as did their officers. Not all of them mind you, but a noticeable number. Even the ones who cursed, pardon the cliché and the reference, like sailors.

As I mentioned at “The Tank,

In testimony to Congress on Monday, General David Petraeus called out Iran for aspirations of regional hegemony in a way not heretofore heard from him or the Multinational Force.  “It is increasingly apparent to both coalition and Iraqi leaders that Iran, through the use of the Quds force, seeks to turn the Iraqi special groups into a Hezbollah-like force to serve its interests and fight a proxy war against the Iraqi state and coalition forces in Iraq.”

This warning isn’t dissimilar to the counsel we gave on March 27, 2007, discussing the return of Moqtada al Sadr from his Iranian vacation:

Sadr will be received back as not just a hero, but as someone almost divine, who stood down the U.S.  Any capture of Sadr and turnover to the courts of Iraq would have the opposite outcome of that intended, because no Iraqi court will convict Sadr of crimes, thus exhonerating and codifying him in his rule of his followers.

Iran will then have their forces deployed in Lebanon, headed by Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, and in Iraq, headed by Moqtada al Sadr.  Only confident actions by the administration – rather than acquiescence by the State Department – will avert such an outcome.

We followed this up with The Rise of the Jam, in which we documented the creation and growth of the Jaish al Mahdi, including the criminal-like behavior of its members.  There is no dearth of evidence concerning the actions and intentions of the JAM, including its support base, Iran and the IRG (Quds).  A quick reading of the introduction to Michael Ledeen’s new book The Iranian Time Bomb will disabuse the naive of the notion that Iran is merely protecting its interests.  Iranian interests have nothing whatsoever to do with Iran, a notion not grasped by those who think of Iran as a nation-state.  As stated by Khomeini:

“We do not worship Iran.  We worship Allah.  For patriotism is is another name for paganism.  I say let this land [Iran] burn.  I say let this land go up in smoke, provided Islam emerges triumphant in the rest of the world.”  Ledeen comments of its more recent history, “Without exception, their core beliefs are totally contrary to the notion they are a traditional nation-state.”

Yet Ryan Crocker hedged Monday night speaking to Brit Hume on Foxnews, saying that the involvement of Iran in Iraq was “self-limiting” due to historical bitterness over the Iraq-Iran war and the fact that the Iranians are “Persians.”  Crocker is a smart man, and this hedging is inexplicable given the robust statement by General Petraeus.

Baby steps are being made to address the Iranian issue.  A U.S. base is currently being constructed along the Iraq-Iran border to interdict Iranian elements (see also here).

BARDA, Iraq — The Pentagon is preparing to build its first base for U.S. forces near the Iraqi-Iranian border, in a major new effort to curb the flow of advanced Iranian weaponry to Shiite militants across Iraq.

The push also includes construction of fortified checkpoints on the major highways leading from the Iranian border to Baghdad and the installation of X-ray machines and explosives-detecting sensors at the only formal border crossing between Iran and Iraq.

The measures come as the U.S. high command in Iraq has begun to recalibrate the overall American mission in the country to focus less on the Sunni Muslim radicals who were long the primary U.S. targets of pacifying the country and more on the Shiite Muslim militias suspected of maintaining close ties to Iran …

Gen. Petraeus is expected to warn that Iran is expanding its attempts to destabilize Iraq by providing Shiite extremists with lethal weaponry such as advanced roadside bombs capable of breaching even the strongest U.S. armor. U.S. commanders say that Iranian-made weaponry is used in an increasing percentage of attacks on U.S. forces, and that Shiite extremists are now responsible for as many anti-American attacks as Sunni radicals.

Iran denies supplying weapons to Iraqi militants, but the accusation is at the center of escalating tensions between Washington and Tehran that have sparked talk of a possible American military strike on Iran.

“We’ve got a major problem with Iranian munitions streaming into Iraq,” said Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, the commander of the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division. “This Iranian interference is troubling and we have to stop it.”

He said advanced roadside bombs — a type the U.S. says are made in the region only in Iran — have been used against his forces in central and southern Iraq, killing nine American soldiers. Gen. Lynch also said the U.S. stopped a planned attack on an American base that would have made use of Iranian-made rockets.

U.S. officials acknowledge the difficulty of stemming the flow of weapons across a border that is unfenced and thinly patrolled in many parts. But they hope that forcing smugglers off the main roads will make it easier to spot the militants through aerial surveillance.

Gen. Lynch says the new effort to curb the flow of Iranian weaponry will have several components: stationing U.S. soldiers at a new base to be built close to the border; building six fortified checkpoints to be manned by troops from the former Soviet republic of Georgia on the highways and major roads leading from the Iranian border to Baghdad; and installing better detection equipment at the Zurbatiya border crossing to make it harder for militants to hide weapons in the hundreds of trucks that pass into Iraq from Iran every day.

The new U.S. base, to be located about four miles from the Iranian border, is meant to be a central component of the expansive American effort to hinder the weapons smuggling. U.S. officers say they plan to use the new base for at least two years, though they say it is unclear whether the outpost will be among the small number of facilities that would remain in Iraq after any future large-scale U.S. withdrawal from the country …

The challenge of preventing Shiite militants from smuggling weaponry and explosives across the largely porous Iraqi-Iranian border was apparent on a recent visit to Wasit, a sparsely populated Iraqi province that abuts the long border between the two countries. There is no fence or wall separating Iran and Iraq, and the border itself is unmarked.

The only Iraqi government presence is a string of primitive border forts, which lack power and running water. The Iraqi officers who command the forts say chronic fuel shortages mean that they and their men don’t have enough gas to drive along the border looking for infiltrators from Iran.

Compounding the challenge, the province is populated by Shiite tribes that have profited for decades by smuggling items to and from Iran. U.S. commanders say the tribes are adept at using the deep gorges and wadis that crisscross the desert to pass into and out of Iran undetected.

“The tribes used to use these same routes to bring in weapons for the Shiite groups fighting Saddam in the 1980s and 1990s,” says Col. Mark Mueller, who commands a military advisory team working with Iraq’s poorly funded border guards. “They’ve been doing this a long, long time.”

Nevertheless, U.S. commanders believe the new checkpoints will boost their interdiction efforts by forcing militants to avoid using the major highways where the checkpoints are situated and instead travel on small dirt roads or across the open desert, where the smugglers’ vehicles stand a better chance of being spotted by American satellites, drones and surveillance airplanes.

“You want to separate the sheep from the wolves, and push the wolves to alternate routes that are easier to interdict,” Col. Mueller says.

Further, regarding the stand-down of the Mahdi army, it should be pointed out that Sadr is using this opportunity to overhaul his armed forces.

Iraq’s most powerful Shiite militia leader is turning to his commanders who distinguished themselves fighting U.S. troops in 2004 to screen fighters, weed out criminals and assume key positions in an effort to build a more disciplined force, two of his key lieutenants say.

That suggests the goal of Muqtada al-Sadr’s temporary freeze of Mahdi Army activities, announced Aug. 29 following deadly Shiite-Shiite clashes in Karbala, is to bolster the militia to intimidate his Shiite rivals as the anti-American cleric pursues his political ambitions.

A stronger and more efficient Mahdi Army could embolden al-Sadr to take on the rival Badr militia, a move that could fragment and weaken the country’s majority Shiites as gunmen battle for control of Shiite towns and cities …

The task of weeding out militiamen with suspect loyalty and screening new recruits already has begun and will take months to complete, according to the two al-Sadr lieutenants, who also are militia leaders who fought the Americans in Najaf in the summer of 2004 and in Sadr City in the fall …

“The (Mahdi) army will be stronger and better organized,” said one of them.

Both said the screening and reorganization process will be supervised nationwide by a 12-man council hand-picked by al-Sadr …

If the reorganization goes according to plan, the new Mahdi Army should emerge as a more disciplined and organized force – similar to its main Shiite rival, the Badr Organization, which is linked to the biggest Shiite party, the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council.

Tension between Mahdi and Badr has been steadily rising and a showdown between them is widely expected for domination of the Shiite south, which includes most of the oil wealth and major religious shrines. Control of the shrines brings millions of dollars in donations from Shiites worldwide.

Al-Sadr is not likely to risk a head-on confrontation with the U.S. military as in 2004. But a stronger Mahdi Army would enable him to resist Washington’s repeated calls to disband the militias, blamed for the wave of sectarian bloodshed that escalated last year.

A Mahdi Army firmly under al-Sadr’s control could reduce what the U.S. military says are attacks by rogue Shiite militiamen controlled by Iran.

Last June, those rogue militiamen accounted for nearly 75 percent of the attacks against U.S. troops in the Baghdad area that caused casualties.

Both the government of Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a one-time close ally of al-Sadr, and the U.S. military welcomed the decision to take the Mahdi Army out of action.

However, there are worrying signs that the freeze is only a cover to buy al-Sadr time to overhaul the militia, improving its mobility and combat readiness.

Al-Sadr’s supporters in Basra, Iraq’s second largest city, did not sign a “charter of honor” reached by representatives of 30 groups and militias there to keep the peace after British troops completed their withdrawal from the city last week.

Residents say the Mahdi Army says it is now entitled to Basra, arguing that it was its almost nightly shelling of British bases in the city and other attacks that forced them to leave. Al-Sadr’s representatives in Basra have also warned they would fight U.S. troops if they move into Basra in the case of a security vacuum.

“They say they fought the British, so Basra is theirs,” said Dagher al-Moussawi, a Shiite lawmaker.

In Sadr City, armed Mahdi Army militiamen stayed off the streets soon after al-Sadr made his Aug. 29 announcement but several were seen in the district over the weekend with some carrying what appeared to be U.S.-made M-4 assault rifles, the type used by American troops.

There have been reports in the United States that some of the weapons destined for Iraq’s security forces have disappeared and remain unaccounted for.

Another Shiite lawmaker, who demanded anonymity for fear of reprisals, said the freeze was designed in part to spare the militia the ongoing campaign by U.S. forces and their Iraqi allies against militiamen suspected of involvement in attacks or sectarian violence.

“He wants to save the Mahdi Army by taking it out and use the time to improve it,” he said.

Ryan Crocker, for all of his intelligence, did us no favors on Monday by demurring on Iran’s role in the region.  Iran has a direct role, and the base being constructed for purposes of interdiction points to an attempt to halt that direct effect.  Iran also has an indirect effect, the military forces it has deployed throughout Iraq, Badr and the JAM.  It is irrelevant that they currently fight each other for Basra.  They both belong to Iran.  Petraeus spoke in clearer terms than Crocker, pointing to what will be the most significant obstacle to pacification of Iraq: Iran.

September 1st came and went quietly without any public discourse on what might be a very signficant event in military aviation.  An unmanned aerial vehicle scored a kill of two IED emplacers.

The US army has hailed the killing of two suspected insurgents in northern Iraq by a drone as a landmark in combat aviation history.

A statement said that a Hunter unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) successfully killed two “unknown enemies” in Nineveh province after ground troops requested backup.

According to the Pentagon, this represented the first time a fully-armed UAV had been launched.

The military claims that soldiers identified two potential bombers at a “major thoroughfare” used by coalition troops.

Before they could deploy roadside bombs – or improvised explosive devices – as suspected, the Hunter was guided in by pilots and its “precise munition” released; killing both men.

But what about those UAVs that loiter and lumber over the battle space searching for Taliban, al Qaeda and other rogue elements to kill?  Most of these are CIA or Air Force.  The Multinational Force press release states in clearer terms what this day means to aviation history.

A Hunter unmanned aerial vehicle engaged and killed two suspected improvised explosive device emplacers overwatching a major thoroughfare for Coalition Forces during a historic flight near Qayyarah, Iraq, in Nineveh province Sept. 1.

A scout weapons team from 2nd Battalion, 25th Aviation Regiment, 25th Combat Aviation Brigade, observed the two unknown enemy fighters in a tactical overwatch near the roadside. The SWT requested support from the Hunter UAV.

The pilots guided the Hunter operator to the scene where it set up for a strike mission and dropped its precision munition, killing both unknown enemies and marking a first in Army Aviation history.

“It’s very humbling to know that we have set an Army historical mark in having the first successful launch in combat from an Army weaponized UAV,

Newsweek leads us into the new week discussing brains and counterinsurgency strategy:

Sept. 17, 2007  issue – Dripping with sweat in the Baghdad summer heat, surrounded by armed Sunnis who not long ago might gladly have killed him, Gen. David Petraeus smiled. He listened as a former insurgent leader, a onetime member of Saddam Hussein’s security forces, listed the grievances that brought him over to the Americans’ side against the jihadists—the senseless killings of garbagemen and shopkeepers, the booby-trapped corpses in the streets, the indiscriminate IED attacks. When the man finished, Petraeus invited him to air his complaints publicly; minutes later the ex-insurgent was being interviewed on an Arabic satellite channel, and the top U.S. officer in Iraq strode off through the dust while his entourage scrambled to keep up. “Now this is counterinsurgency, by God!” he later declared.

Is it? Petraeus should know, as the man who pulled together The Book on it: the U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual (FM 4-23). There’s just one problem—Iraq doesn’t follow the book. The manual—highly touted as the basis upon which the surge of U.S. forces this year would be organized—deals with threats to a functioning government that enjoys broad-based legitimacy. That’s scarcely what exists in Baghdad, says Sarah Sewall, director of Harvard’s Carr Center for Human Rights. A devout believer in winning hearts and minds, she worked closely with Petraeus on producing FM 4-23. “I would argue that Petraeus has done as good a job as humanly possible,” she says. “But by the time he got to Iraq, I think the war was no longer fightable ac-cording (sic) to the counterinsurgency doctrine we drafted.”

At this point I stopped reading the Newsweek analysis.  Not that I refuse to listen to yet another analysis on the complexity of Iraq and how we were unprepared for it.  I have written myself too many times on this same subject.  Also, I agree with Petraeus that given the option of having someone shoot a camera or a firearm at another person, I’d prefer the camera any day.  But I have been critical of other aspects of the new counterinsurgency field manual.  For instance, I have advocated a return to the wisdom of the Small Wars Manual concerning disarming the population, wisdom we implemented with vigor with the Sunnis (allowing them to keep only a single firearm for family protection but not to form militias except under U.S. supervision), but refused to implement with the Badr Corps, Jaish al Mahdi and other armed factions in the balance of Iraq, even though they are armed, supported, trained, funded, equipped and encouraged by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards (Quds).  There are more examples I could cite on which I have opined, but will spare the reader.

I stopped reading the Newsweek analysis because, well, I guess I’m just old-fashioned.  If you are going to critique or report on something as an objective analyst, you had better get the name of the thing you’re going to critique right.  After twice seeing the designator for the field manual as FM 4-23 rather than FM 3-24, I figured that they didn’t have much to teach me.

Kinetic operations against rogue elements – terrorists and insurgents – are the foundation upon which nonkinetic operations is built.  Without security, so I have argued, reconstruction is meaningless.  Candy and pediolyte for the children and babies and footballs for the teenagers doesn’t compare to holes drilled into ribs with a power drill at the hands of a terrorist.  I have watched over months and years as the Marines have deliberately and methodically rooted rogue elements from Anbar and slowly but surely ensured a military defeat for al Qaeda, Ansar al Sunna and other groups intent on fundamentalist Islamic tyranny and domination.

This hard work over four years set the stage for the tribal alliance with U.S. forces, but even here, given that the tribes were not as strong in Fallujah as in the balance of Anbar, different flavors of COIN were employed and other more classical counterinsurgency tactics, techniques and procedures had to be applied to win the security (such as gated communities, see Operation Alljah and the Marines of 2nd Battalion, 6th Regiment).  Yet upon the sure success of a determined United States Marine Corps, the final stages do come, heralding the advent of the warrior-scholar.

When Marine Lt. Col. Bill Mullen showed up at the city council meeting here Tuesday, everyone wanted a piece of him. There was the sheikh who wants to open a school, the judge who wants the colonel to be at the jail when several inmates are freed, and the Iraqi who just wants a burned-out trash bin removed from his neighborhood.

As insurgent violence continues to decrease in Iraq’s Sunni-dominated Anbar Province – an improvement that President Bush heralded in his visit to Al Asad Air Base Monday as one sign of progress in the war – the conversation is shifting in Anbar. Where sheikhs and tribal leaders once only asked the US to protect them from Sunni extremists, now they want to know how to get their streets cleaned and where to buy generators.

“Security dominated everything, and we weren’t able to get anything done,” says Colonel Mullen, battalion commander here.

It’s been six months since the so-called Anbar Awakening, when Sunni sheikhs joined US Marines in the fight against Al Qaeda in Iraq. Sunni extremists may still have a presence here, but US military officials say that with the help of the expanding Iraqi security forces, they’ve driven most of what remains of Al Qaeda from the urban areas.

Violence has stayed down, dropping from 2,000 attacks in March to about 450 last month – as the number of Iraqi security forces has increased, from around 24,000 this spring to nearly 40,000 today.

The changes here have allowed provincial and local governments to get established over the past few months, US officials here say. And now, true to the tribal culture that permeates Iraqi society, Sunni sheikhs here want to create a relationship of true patronage with what they consider to be the biggest and most powerful tribe here: the Marines of Anbar Province.

Handling such situations as presented to the Marines in Anbar at the moment requires greater managerial skill than most state-side executives will ever be required to exercise in their entire careers.  The successful field grade officer in counterinsurgency must be an anthropologist, psychologist, theologian, manager, tactician, logistician, arbiter, lawyer and politician.  He must exemplify the warrior poet … in a different era.

Almost simultaneously with Lt. Col. William Mullen’s city council appearance was another by Lt. Col. Jason Bohm in al Qaim, who was dealing with an ethical, legal and political situation.  Each officer does what he must in the situation in which he finds himself, while upholding the honor of the United States and the Marine Corps.

But the scholarship isn’t just displayed at the highest levels of leadership.  Michael Yon observes of the grunts:

Now I started to understand why the Army officers had been telling me the Marines are more advanced in counterinsurgency. Normal Marines have morphed into doing vintage Special Forces work. Many of our Army units are excellent at this work, but the Marines, at least these particular Marines, did seem to have an edge for it.

They were even studying Arabic in their filthy little compound. Lightweight study, but they were showing the Iraqis they were making the effort. The Iraqis appreciated it. I have yet to see an Army unit undertake such a clear effort to learn Arabic.

The Marines there live in disgusting conditions. They have two toilets. One is a tube. For more serious business, there are the small plastic baggies called WAG bags. Do your business, seal it up and put it into a garbage can. They don’t complain.

The professional counterinsurgency community wants to prematurely deploy this phase of the campaign.  This is a mistake – it is misplaced emphasis.  But the hard work has been done in Anbar: the security has been won, and the insurgency has been militarily defeated, as least in the main.  Now is the time for winning hearts and minds.  It is the time of the warrior-scholar, and the Marines are proving up to the task.