Archive for the 'Department of Defense' Category

“I got nothing but mad props for 2/6. With another unit from October 2006 to April 2007, many of us often found ourselves questioning the logic of how we were doing certain things, and positing “why can’t we do such and such.” 2/6 came in and, well, did such and such. During the relief-in-place with the company that replaced us replaced my faith in the U.S. Marine Corps; I’ve never been more impressed.” (courtesy of Michael Totten)

The whole persona of the 2/6 [Marines], the way they’re running operations, is to provide for the citizens. The IPs [Iraqi Police] are like that too, they’re out there engaging the people. They [used to get] attacked so much that they were a military force, doing military-type operations. When they showed up, they showed up hard. Now it’s more ‘Hey what’s going on? How are you doing? What can we do for you?’ It’s yielded huge gains.” (courtesy of Bill Ardolino)

The Small Wars Journal blog has an interesting continuation of the debate over strategy in Iraq by Pete Mansoor, entitled Misreading the History of the Iraq War.  Part of Mansoor’s commentary follows:

In his latest missive on the U.S. endeavor in Iraq (“Misreading the Surge Threatens U.S. Army’s Conventional Capabilities”), Army Lieutenant Colonel Gian Gentile claims that the Surge forces and the new U.S. Army and Marine Corps counterinsurgency doctrine had little effect on the situation in Iraq. Rather, U.S. forces paid off the insurgents, who stopped fighting for cash. Once again, Gian Gentile misreads not just what is happening today in Iraq, but the history of the war.

To borrow a quote from Ronald Reagan, “Gian, there you go again.”

Gentile’s analysis is incorrect in a number of ways, and his narrative is heavily influenced by the fact that he was a battalion commander in Baghdad in 2006. His unit didn’t fail, his thinking goes, therefore recent successes cannot be due to anything accomplished by units that came to Iraq during the Surge.

The facts speak otherwise. Gentile’s battalion occupied Ameriyah, which in 2006 was an Al Qaeda safe-haven infested by Sunni insurgents and their Al Qaeda-Iraq allies. I’m certain that he and his soldiers did their best to combat these enemies and to protect the people in their area. But since his battalion lived at Forward Operating Base Falcon and commuted to the neighborhood, they could not accomplish their mission. The soldiers did not fail. The strategy did.

This is a common narrative concerning the security plan and revised strategy for Operation Iraqi Freedom, i.e., “it’s all about the combat outposts.”  If the troops are on a FOB (Forward Operating Base), they cannot possibly engage in counterinsurgency.  This may be true under certain conditions for the mega-bases such as Camp Fallujah.  But this perspective seems very incomplete and truncated.  The experience of the Marines of 2/6 during Operation Alljah shows us why.

With the Anbar province pacified it might be difficult to recall the condition as recently as late 2006 in Ramadi and throughout the province.  The condition was bad almost beyond words, but with the success of the Marines and tribes in combating al Qaeda and other insurgents in the Western part of Anbar, the Eastern parts fell subject to their horror.  Fallujah, which had always been a very hardened city, was the new home to rogue elements from all across the globe.  Libyans, Chechens, and other hard core jihadist fighters called Fallujah home in early 2007.  They had utter and complete control, and were protecting a huge weapons cache in the industrial area, including small arms, explosive ordnance and chlorine.  The Marine command in this area of operations called Fallujah “unwinnable.”  At this point, the Anbar campaign could just as easily have taken a turn for the worse, and in fact could have turned completely in favor of the insurgency.

Into this came the Marines of the 2nd Battalion, 6th Regiment.  The population had clearly sided with the insurgents.  On one occasion the Marines witnessed the ultimate commitment being made by the locals (or perhaps the ultimate cowardice, or perhaps both).  The neighborhood children were sent out to demarcate the location of Marines on patrol by encircling the area and raising black balloons for insurgent mortars.  Soon enough, the mortar rounds started dropping.

Fallujah was pacified, but the Marines of 2/6 didn’t do it by living in combat outposts for seven months.  In fact, they were deployed to a FOB named Reaper, constructed specifically for 2/6 on the South side of Fallujah.  Upon 2/6 leaving Reaper, this FOB was never to see U.S. troops again.  This episode – the narrative, the FOB, the experiences, the unique things accomplished – remains not only important in the history of the Marines, but an un-mined jewel of counterinsurgency practice.

The Marines of 2/6 were rotated out to combination combat outposts / Iraqi police precincts for weeks at a time, and then rotated back to FOB Reaper to provide force protection for weeks, or conduct patrols, or nighttime census missions, or intelligence driven raids, or whatever the mission happened to be at the time.  These rotations were staggered so that the combat outposts were never unmanned, FOB Reaper always had adequate force protection, raids always had manpower, kinetic operations always took place against insurgents, checkpoints were always manned, and Iraqi police always had U.S. presence.  Sleep was a luxury, and all of the Marines were always busy.  Close and constant contact with the police and population and relentless kinetic operations against the insurgents was characteristic of the time that 2/6 spent in Fallujah.  The closest analogy that can be given of this operation is that of a swarm.  The Marines swarmed over Fallujah until the insurgents were killed or captured and the population sided with the U.S.  This close contact was not allowed to diminish the implementation of force protection.  While force protection was maintained, force projection was the hallmark of the final Marine Corp battle for Fallujah.

Whatever else can be said of the Iraq campaign, there were not enough troops (force size) to accomplish the mission (force projection).  This is not a fault of Gentile’s unit.  Concerning strategy, only Lt. Col. Gian Gentile and his reports can know if they accomplished the force projection needed to win a counterinsurgency.  If so, then his unit should be seen as a continuation of the overall campaign for Iraq.  After all, for those who claim that counterinsurgency takes ten to twelve years, it should not be surprising that a single deployment is only a part of the campaign rather than the thing in its entirety.  Time was necessary to convince the population that the U.S. troops were not “short-timers,” and thus Gentile may be right.  Neither the strategy nor the troops failed, but again, only Gentile knows if the force projection was adequate.

It all comes down to having enough troops and doing the right things with those troops.  Whether those troops man a checkpoint or conduct an intelligence-driven raid or take population census or go on patrols, where they live is only of logistical importance.  If it is beneficial to live at a combat outpost in some particular circumstance, then that’s where they should be.  If it is beneficial to live at a FOB but rarely spend time there because of constant contact with the population, they that’s where they should be.  While this experience raises the issue of Marine deployment length (7 months) and whether another branch of the service could survive longer deployments (e.g., 12 or 14 months) at the same pace, nonetheless, the salient points are unimpuned.  They key is what the troops do and how often they do it, not where they sleep.

The publication of Army Field Manual 3-0, Operations, gives us a chance to pause and ponder definitions, concepts, and going forward doctrine for the global war on terror, much or most of which is likely to be small wars, irregular engagements and counterinsurgency.  But some background is in order before considering the new field manual.

In 2002, Antulio J. Echevarria II authored an interesting analysis entitled Clausewitz’s Center of Gravity: Changing our Warfighting Doctrine – Again!  There is probably no more copiously quoted military strategist than Clausewitz, and it pays to correctly understand what he said.  To begin, Echevarria briefly traces what he sees as the glasses through which the branches within the U.S. military have “seen” Clausewitz.

… each of the services – shaped by different roles, histories, and traditions—tended to view the CoG concept in their respective images. The U.S. Army and U.S. Navy, for example, typically thought in terms of a single CoG, which usually resided at the core of one’s land or naval power and provided the “source” of one’s physical and psychological capacity to fight. The U.S. Air Force, on the other hand, pursued the notion of multiple CoGs, each of which could be “targeted” from the air to achieve the paralysis of the enemy.  And, finally, the U.S. Marine Corps (USMC), with the difficult mission of conducting amphibious forcible entry operations, preferred for a time to think of the CoG as a key weakness, or critical vulnerability, the exploitation of which would give it a decisive advantage.

Echevarria argues that Clausewitz sees CoG neither as a weakness nor a strength, but a focal point at which force may be employed to force the enemy to become unbalanced and topple.  Much like the martial art of Jiu jitsu, the goal is to find the point of maximum leverage against the enemy and exploit it to upend the enemy.

Clausewitz did not distinguish between tactical, operational, or strategic CoGs. The CoG is defined by the entire system (or structure) of the enemy, not by a level of war … According to Clausewitz, a local commander might determine a center of gravity for the portion of the enemy’s forces that lay before him, providing those forces demonstrated sufficient independence from the remainder of the enemy’s forces. However, this separate CoG would only amount to a local rather than a tactical or operational CoG. For us to speak of a tactical CoG, the tactical level of war would have to exist independent of the operational and strategic levels of war. Similarly, for CoGs to exist at the operational and strategic levels of war, those levels of war would have to have an existence separate from the rest of warfare. This notion defies the principle of unity – or interconnectedness – that German military thinkers from Clausewitz to Heinz Guderian had ascribed to warfare.

Translating “On War” from the German, Echevarria gives us an important point in understanding Clausewitz.

The first principle is: To trace the full weight (Gewicht) of the enemy’s force (Macht) to as few centers of gravity as possible, when feasible, to one; and, at the same time, to reduce the blow against these centers of gravity to as few major actions as possible, when feasible, to one.

. . . reducing the enemy’s force (Macht) to one center of gravity depends, first, upon the [enemy’s] political connectivity [or unity] itself . . . and, second, upon the situation in the theater of war itself, and which of the various enemy armies appear there.

Antulio J. Echevarria II recommends a redefinition of CoG: “Centers of Gravity are focal points that serve to hold a combatant’s entire system or structure together and that draw power from a variety of sources and provide it with purpose and direction.”

This is a complex construction of thoughts, and it bears unpacking a bit.  Clausewitz’s background was in the physics, and so it necessarily stands to reason that a CoG should be single and unitary.  The CoG is a theoretical construct with which one can evaluate and predict the behavior of objects as they are acted upon by gravity.  It requires other things such as computation of the centroidal axis of an object.  For a single object, there is a single CoG.  For multiple objects there can still be a CoG as long as the objects are not dynamic.  But if the objects are moving in Cartesian space with respect to the other objects in a system, there can be no single CoG.

Clausewitz understood this, and while there are arguments for seeing an Army as a dynamic system, he is compelled to see it more as an object with a unitary CoG.  There are not multiple CoG, only one, and this point is critical to understanding Clausewitz.

Speaking at the Center for a New American Security along with Lt. Col. John Nagl, Sarah Sewall of Harvard University stated the following:

If the civilian is the center of gravity, securing and protecting is the main function of military forces, not destroying.  If restraint in the use of military force is fundamental to the successful campaign, then that is in fact the opposite of overwhelming force.

Sewall goes on to give nonkinetic operations a place of primacy over kinetic operations.  In finding a sole CoG, she is true to the Clausewitz idea of a unitary CoG.  But is this notion of locating and articulating a unitary CoG in counterinsurgency (COIN) based solely on Clausewitz, FM 3-24, the newly released FM 3-0, or something else?

Regarding the Counterinsurgency field manual, FM 3-24, the phrase “center of gravity” appears only three times (except for the definition), and the most interesting is found in section 4-12:

In model making, the model describes an approach to the COIN campaign, initially as a hypothesis.  The model includes operational terms of reference and concepts that shape the language governing the  conduct (planning, preparation, execution, and assessment) of the operation. It addresses questions like  these: Will planning, preparation, execution, and assessment activities use traditional constructs like center  of gravity, decisive points, and LLOs? Or are other constructs—such as leverage points, fault lines, or  critical variables—more appropriate to the situation?

Rather than CoG being the central doctrinal concept in COIN, a different concept begins to appear, that of lines of operation, appearing first in Section 1-36:

The Vietnamese conflict offers another example of the application of Mao’s strategy. The North Vietnamese developed a detailed variant of it known as dau tranh (“the struggle”) that is most easily described in terms of logical lines of operations (LLOs). In this context, a line of operations is a logical line that connects actions on nodes and/or decisive points related in time and purpose with an objective (JP 1-02). LLOs can also be described as an operational framework/planning construct used to define the concept of multiple, and often disparate, actions arranged in a framework unified by purpose. (Chapters 4 and 5 discuss LLOs typically used in COIN operations.) Besides modifying Mao’s three phases, dau tranh delineated LLOs for achieving political objectives among the enemy population, enemy soldiers, and friendly forces. The “general offensive–general uprising” envisioned in this approach did not occur during the Vietnam War; however, the approach was designed to achieve victory by whatever means were effective.  It did not attack a single enemy center of gravity; instead it put pressure on several, asserting that, over time, victory would result in one of two ways: from activities along one LLO or the combined effects of efforts along several. North Vietnamese actions after their military failure in the 1968 Tet offensive demonstrate this approach’s flexibility. At that time, the North Vietnamese shifted their focus from defeating U.S. forces in Vietnam to weakening U.S. will at home. These actions expedited U.S. withdrawal and laid the groundwork for the North Vietnamese victory in 1975.

Here the concept of lines of operation appear, by example, in a linear implementation.  If this line of operation doesn’t work, another will be implemented.  In FM 3-0, this concept is upgraded and explained as something other than unitary, singular, sequential actions (6-61).

Commanders may describe an operation along lines of operation, lines of effort, or a combination of both.  Irregular warfare, for example, typically features a deliberate approach using lines of operations complimented with lines of effort … with this approach, commanders synchronize and sequence actions, deliberately creating complementary and reinforcing effects.  The lines then converge on the well-defined, commonly understood end state outlined in the commander’s intent.

The concept of lines of operations and lines of effort appears many more times in FM 3-0.  If FM 3-0 represents an advancement over the Clausewitz doctrine of a unitary CoG, then what are we to make of this notion of COIN as “armed social science”?  This view certainly doesn’t cohere with Osama bin Laden’s summary of the psyche of the population in this part of the world: “When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse.”  Similarly, we have claimed that the Anbar campaign was won because the U.S. was the strong horse.

The seeds of this view are actually contained within FM 3-24 itself.  In Section 1-159, we read that “COIN is an extremely complex form of warfare. At its core, COIN is a struggle for the population’s support. The protection, welfare, and support of the people are vital to success.”  In Section 5-42, we read that “Essential services address the life support needs of the HN population. The U.S. military’s primary task is normally to provide a safe and secure environment.”  In Section A-60, we read that “Whatever else is done, the focus must remain on gaining and maintaining the support of the population. With their support, victory is assured; without it, COIN efforts cannot succeed.”

True enough within the right context, statements such as these give ammunition to those who see COIN as “armed social science,” and allow theoreticians such as Sarah Sewall to focus in on a singular CoG, that being the population.  Gaining their support is key, and kinetic operations are secondary or even tertiary in importance.  It is a small next step to the claim that restraint in military force in the key to winning the population.  How Sewall expects to provide security for the population without kinetic operations against the enemy remains a mystery.  After all, “armed social science” is more like U.N. “peace keeping” missions that routinely fail to keep the peace than it is the actual campaign in Iraq.

The security plan for Iraq, however, is in many ways modeled after the Anbar part of that campaign, in which military force was the pretext to the successes with the tribes, neighborhood muktars, and heads of households.  It might be countered that the focus on lines of operations (kinetic) and lines of effort (nonkinetic) represents a more tactical focus, but in the end, theory bows the knee to tactics and logistics because all counterinsurgency is local.

National unity, political reconciliation, fair participation in the political scene and infrastructure and services are all significant actors in whether the more local lines of operations have lasting effect.  But if FM 3-24 represents the softer side of COIN, FM 3-0 seems to see COIN as the multifacted complexity that it is.  Rather than see a singular, unitary CoG in COIN, FM 3-0 seems to view an insurgency as a loosely coupled and dynamic machine, or even organism, which has no tipping point, thus requiring in response parallel lines of effort that target different aspects in different ways and with different means – sometimes simultaneously and sometimes sequentially.

No astute observer of the campaign in Iraq – especially in Anbar and subsequently in and around Baghdad during the security plan – seeing the high number of intelligence driven raids, heavy use of air power, and kinetic operations against foreign terrorists and indigenous insurgents, can claim that kinetic operations have taken on a secondary or tertiary role to anything.  In other words, when the successful practice in the field doesn’t comport with the theory in the books, only the disconnected theoreticians can continue the mantras.  It was time to update doctrine to recognize the nature of the gains in Iraq.  By so robustly enveloping lines of operations and lines of effort within its pages, FM 3-0 may represent a significant advancement in military doctrine over FM 3-24.

Our buddy GI at Forward Deployed has an article up on the main stream media demagoging high school recruiting rates, in which he takes direct aim at the notion of recruiting problems due to the global war on terror.

The claim that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are responsible for the military accepting more recruits with GEDs is an assumption by the AP writer and not a fact which is something the writer does not make clear.  The Army recruiting spokesman told the writer the difficult recruiting environment had to do with the drop in graduation rates but some how the AP writer contributes it to the war on terror. 

Why didn’t the AP writer disclose what the current high school graduation  rates are?  Could it be because it would sink his article because high school graduation rates are currently hovering around the 70% range, which is nearly identical to what the US military is allowing in?  It is a whole other topic, but I find our US graduation rate highly embarrassing and have heard our politicians say anything about what they are going to do to improve it.  Anyway, it seems like this is a highly pertinent fact that should be included in the article, but it wasn’t probably because it would ruin the AP writer’s narrative that war on terror is responsible for the decline. 

Besides the decline in high school graduation rates the Army is going through a massive increase in soldiers:

Plans are to raise the number of active-duty Army, Army Guard and Army Reserve by 74,000 overall, with the active-duty force rising by 65,000 to a total of 547,000. In October, top Army leaders said they planned to move faster to expand the force by adding the full 74,000 soldiers by 2010, two years earlier than originally planned. [Stars & Stripes]

This increase is on top of the prior increases US military recruiters had to deal with in recent years.  It is extremely impressive that recruiters have been able to meet recruiting goals, but I predicted last year that recruiters will probably have a hard time meeting this latest increase in troops especially if the economy remains strong, which is another fact that was some how missing from the AP article. 

Declining high school graduation rates, an expanding military, and a strong economy all have much more to do with the drop in high school graduates than blaming it on the war on terror, but obviously the AP could care less because the narrative of blaming it on the war on terror fits with their on going theme that the war on terror is breaking the military. 

Finally, I just want to say I find it extremely snobby that because someone has a GED they are considered by the AP to be a poor recruit.  I know plenty of soldiers with GEDs that were much better soldiers than soldier that I had that had college degrees much less a high school diploma.

I agree across the board with GI.  But if we are to grow the military over the next several years, something must be done to encourage not only recruits, but re-enlistments as well.  Jeff Jacoby has a commentary up at the Boston Globe in which he advocates the notion of granting automatic citizenship to illegal aliens for military service.

Flooding our armed forces with illegal aliens is without a doubt a highly draconian and dreadful idea.  I have a better one.  I propose an across the board 40% increase in all salaries for all service members, this proposal having no bearing on other incentives or signing bonuses.  The only assumption behind this proposal is that America cares enough about its own self defense to properly fund the armed forces.

In U.S. Intelligence Failures: Dual Taliban Campaigns, I reported on the disparity between Major General Rodriguez and open source information concerning the split in the Taliban, and the resultant focus on two fronts this spring – one in Afghanistan and the other in Pakistan.  The poor intelligence analysis didn’t stop here.  In The Afghanistan Narrative I reported on the disparate views within not only NATO, but also the Pentagon, as to the state of the insurgency and counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan.  I followed this up with World in Disarray – Lack of Strategies in which I pointed out more public and vocal disagreements (up to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates) concerning the state of the campaign in Afghanistan.  Finally, the main stream media picks up on the lack of coordination and coherent analysis for Afghanistan.  The Air Force Times reports on the split views between Mullen and McNeill.

The Taliban is not “resurgent” in Afghanistan, said the U.S. general who commands the 42,000-member NATO force there, contradicting the Defense Department view, expressed most recently before Congress during two hearings Wednesday by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Adm. Mike Mullen.

In his written statements submitted for the record to the House and Senate armed services committees, Mullen said, “In Afghanistan, we are seeing a growing insurgency, increasing violence, and a burgeoning drug trade fueled by widespread poppy cultivation.”

At a Wednesday morning press conference at the Pentagon, Army Gen. Dan McNeill agreed with the second two points but took exception to Mullen’s claim of the insurgency’s growth.

“Admiral Mullen has his view,” said McNeill, commander of NATO’s International Security Assistance Force for the past year. “I’ve got mine, too.”

First, this is a sad state of affairs – not the disagreement between senior officials (which can he healthy in cases), but rather, the lack of intelligence analysis and doctrinal coherence in the campaign in Afghanistan.  This – in itself – is a pointer to issues with leadership.  Second, it should be noted that a blogger is again at the forefront of the analysis, preceeding the main stream media by days in this case (and months in others).

In The Afghanistan Narrative we covered the disparate views of the Afghanistan campaign among the top military leaders in the U.S.  Contrary to reports of a split Taliban and dual insurgency front in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Major General David Rodriguez believes that the Taliban will focus only on Pakistan.  NATO leadership says that the insurgency is not growing and not expanding.  Admiral Mullen, on the other hand, says that we are facing a classic growing insurgency.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates agrees with NATO.  General Dan McNeill, the top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, weighed in defending Gates’ position.  Then about the same time McNeill was speaking, the Afghan Defense Minister weighed in saying that the Taliban threat was worse than expected.

Afghanistan needs more foreign troops as the threat from the Taliban is greater than anticipated, Afghanistan’s defense minister said on Wednesday.

Abdul Rahim Wardak’s comments came as Britain and the United States urged other NATO members to share more of the burden of the fight in Afghanistan, particularly in the south, where the Islamist Taliban insurgency is strongest.

“For the transitional period there is a requirement for more troops. That is why the U.S. committed about 2,200 marines recently,” Wardak told a news conference after meeting Estonian Defense Minister Jaak Aaviksoo.

Wardak added: “The cause was that the threat is much higher than anticipated in 2001”.

These issues should figure prominently in the upcoming Munich Security Conference on February 8, 2008.

The debate in NATO about troop commitments to Afghanistan is expected to figure prominently in the annual Munich Security Conference that opens in the Bavarian capital on Friday, Feb. 8.

The demand by US Defense Secretary Robert Gates for more troops has placed Washington’s European partners in the alliance on the defensive, conference organizer Horst Teltschik said Sunday.

Some 350 high-caliber politicians and military leaders are due to take part in the three-day gathering, which will be opened with a speech by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Gates, US Republican presidential candidate John McCain and Russian Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov will be there along with the presidents of Georgia, Macedonia and Moldova.

More than 40 foreign and defense ministers have pledged to attend the conference, the slogan of which is “a world in disarray — shifting powers — lack of strategies.”

The conference is aptly named.

The Pentagon is split on troop drawdown in Iraq, but the split has nothing whatsoever to do with politics or non-military stateside considerations.

Discussions about a possible pause in troop cuts in Iraq underscore what is shaping up as a sharp debate between the U.S. commanders running the war and those who have to provide the forces for the fight.

Military leaders, including Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stressed Friday that it is too soon to tell if troop withdrawals should slow or stop. But they acknowledged that it is becoming more and more difficult to find the Army soldiers and Marines to send to battle in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“The question becomes not so much a pause,” said Marine Commandant Gen. James Conway Friday, “but how much risk is a commander willing to accept” when weighing the conflicting needs of providing troops for war while still giving some relief to the over-stressed force.

Summary of force size in Iraq since the inception of Operation Iraqi Freedom – 2003: U.S. forces were at 143,000 when Baghdad fell in April and ranged from a high of 148,900 in June to a low of 121,100 in December.  2004: Ranged from low of 108,900 in January to high of 150,200 in December.  2005: Started in January at peak of 159,000 and ranged from low of 138,000 from June through August, then back up to 157,000 in October.  2006: Ranged from 137,000 in January to low of 125,000 in June to high of 147,700 in October.  The graph depicts force size in Iraq from January of 2007 through January of 2208, with the data from January 2008 to July 2008 being interpolated based on an unofficial goal expressed by Defense Secretary Robert Gates of 100 000 by December of 2008.

The split in thinking is not general, but very targeted and pertinent to specific units and lengths of deployment.

The debate in the Pentagon is over what to do when those five brigades are brought home in coming months. It is complicated by the mixed picture in Iraq, where violence levels are far lower than a year ago but have shown signs of worsening in recent days, especially in volatile areas north of Baghdad.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said he hopes conditions in Iraq allow a cutback to 10 brigades by year’s end. That would make it possible for the Army to reduce combat tours from 15 months to 12 months.

I feel that there are two aspects of this analysis, one flawed and the other “spot on.”  First, the lengths of deployment are terribly long and wear thin for both the warriors and their families.  The size of the Army and Marines should have been grown with haste four years ago.  The force size in Iraq during calendar years 2003 – 2006 reflects the Rumsfeld – Wolfowitz model, which, although obviously wrongheaded, was in part based on the size of the Army and Marines at the time (along with a naive belief in the healing powers of democracy).  The size of the armed forces has not grown substantially since then, and so the only way to accomplish the “surge” was to lengthen deployments.  The Pentagon is right to worry about an Army and Marines that are stretched too thin to continue constant and lengthy deployments.

However, the draw-down of troops will not be highly dependent on individual and specific acts of terrorism, but rather, sweeping strategic assessments of regions and factions.  For instance, al Qaeda is essentially defeated in Iraq (with some operations still ongoing in the North), and is redeploying to other areas of the globe (as we predicted in November of 2007).  However, there is pressure from within the Mahdi army for Moqtada al Sadr not to renew his commitment to a truce when it expires this month (note that a failure to renew the truce would likely affect Shi’a on Shi’a violence more than Shi’a on Sunni violence).  There are important developments that must be monitored before final decisions can be made to draw down to a mission of national security and ensuring sovereignty versus regular constabulary operations.

I have previously predicted that Iraq would not only be a protectorate of the U.S. for another decade, but pseudo-permanent bases would eventually be constructed and garrisoned in Iraq – most likely in Northern Iraq – at some point, sooner rather than later.  Coupled with this, I have argued, would be a stand-down in constabulary operations, along with a focus on kinetic operations resulting from intelligence-driven raids.  I had also predicted that the chest butts and posturing by Iraq about U.S. forces standing down in a year was all show, and that sooner rather than later a longer term deal would be struck between the U.S. and Iraq to ensure the national security of Iraq.

Lo and behold, the Iraqi Defense Minister sees the need for U.S. help in Iraq until 2018.

The Iraqi defense minister said Monday that his nation would not be able to take full responsibility for its internal security until 2012, nor be able on its own to defend Iraq’s borders from external threat until at least 2018.

Those comments from the minister, Abdul Qadir, were among the most specific public projections of a timeline for the American commitment in Iraq by officials in either Washington or Baghdad. And they suggested a longer commitment than either government had previously indicated.

Pentagon officials expressed no surprise at Mr. Qadir’s projections, which were even less optimistic than those he made last year.

President Bush has never given a date for a military withdrawal from Iraq but has repeatedly said that American forces would stand down as Iraqi forces stand up. Given Mr. Qadir’s assessment of Iraq’s military capabilities on Monday, such a withdrawal appeared to be quite distant, and further away than any American officials have previously stated in public.

This level of commitment should force a view to the larger picture.  The U.S. is requesting that NATO send more forces to Afghanistan, forces that cannot fire a weapon due to restrictive rules of engagement, while the U.S. garrisons forces in Germany.  This backwards, cold war mentality is a drain on resources and an artifact of half century old thinking.  It has got to go if the West is to survive.

Bill Gertz with the Washington Times is reporting that a specialist on Islamic law has been fired from his position at the Pentagon.

Stephen Coughlin, the Pentagon specialist on Islamic law and Islamist extremism, has been fired from his position on the military’s Joint Staff. The action followed a report in this space last week revealing opposition to his work for the military by pro-Muslim officials within the office of Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England.

Mr. Coughlin was notified this week that his contract with the Joint Staff will end in March, effectively halting the career of one of the U.S. government’s most important figures in analyzing the nature of extremism and ultimately preparing to wage ideological war against it.

He had run afoul of a key aide to Mr. England, Hasham Islam, who confronted Mr. Coughlin during a meeting several weeks ago when Mr. Islam sought to have Mr. Coughlin soften his views on Islamist extremism.

Mr. Coughlin was accused directly by Mr. Islam of being a Christian zealot or extremist “with a pen,” according to defense officials. Mr. Coughlin appears to have become one of the first casualties in the war of ideas with Islamism.

The officials said Mr. Coughlin was let go because he had become “too hot” or controversial within the Pentagon.

Misguided Pentagon officials, including Mr. Islam and Mr. England, have initiated an aggressive “outreach” program to U.S. Muslim groups that critics say is lending credibility to what has been identified as a budding support network for Islamist extremists, including front groups for the radical Muslim Brotherhood.

Mr. Coughlin wrote a memorandum several months ago based on documents made public in a federal trial in Dallas that revealed a covert plan by the Muslim Brotherhood, an Egyptian-origin Islamist extremist group, to subvert the United States using front groups. Members of one of the identified front groups, the Islamic Society of North America, has been hosted by Mr. England at the Pentagon.

After word of the confrontation between Mr. Coughlin and Mr. Islam was made public, support for Mr. Coughlin skyrocketed among those in and out of government who feared the worst, namely that pro-Muslim officials in the Pentagon were after Mr. Coughlin’s scalp, and that his departure would be a major setback for the Pentagon’s struggling efforts to develop a war of ideas against extremism. Blogs lit up with hundreds of postings, some suggesting that Mr. England’s office is “penetrated” by the enemy in the war on terrorism.

Kevin Wensing, a spokesman for Mr. England, said “no one in the deputy’s office had any input into this decision” by the Joint Staff to end Mr. Coughlin’s contract. A Joint Staff spokesman had no immediate comment.

I have always reported the truth, whether popular or not.  Using some open source references and an intelligence source, in Anbar, in Al Qaeda, Indigenous Sunnis and the Insurgency in Iraq, I reported on the high concentration of indigenous fighters within the insurgency in Anbar, contrary to the popular notion of a fight exclusively against al Qaeda.  I was discussing co-opting the insurgents before discussion of “concerned citizens” became current and popular.  However, contrary to Dave Kilcullen who argued against the idea of a single fighter engaging for religious reasons, I argued that there was a strong international element within Iraq functioning as terrorists due to religious motivation.  See:

Religion and Insurgency: A Response to Dave Kilcullen
Smith Responds
More on Dave Kilcullen vs. Smith

I also have made it clear from my coverage of Operation Alljah in Fallujah that the primary enemy were foreign fighters: Chechens, Africans, men of Arab descent, and men of Far Eastern descent.  These men, some of whom came from thousands of miles away to conduct jihad against America, fought for religious reasons.  The primary aim in this accuracy and truthfulness, while rising above political talking points for either party, is to understand the makeup of the insurgency and thereby be able to craft a strategy against them.

There are the typical vacuous accolades for the Pentagon over the ejection of Coughlin – statements such as “As far as I’m concerned, this is a good sign, particularly in combination with the Pentagon’s consideration of an Iraq “Marshall Plan”. (sic) It means that they’re abandoning the “Islam is evil” mindset that has pervaded the White House and the Pentagon for most of the war in favor of a more moderate position which includes reaching out to the vast moderate Muslim community; something that must happen if we are to win the Long War.”  This sentiment betrays its lack of observation of the press coverage of the global jihad over the last five years.  The current administration refuses to use terms like this, and present leadership has even jettisoned the monicker “long war” set in place by General Abizaid, who should know about this given his background and knowledge of the Middle East.

A clear and honest understanding of the current global situation requires the admission that while there is a large percentage of the Muslim community which doesn’t wish to conduct jihad against anyone, much less the West, there is still another fraction which nurtures a hermeneutic that requires them to do just that, this hermeneutic being a cornerstone of their Muslim faith.  This hermeneutic is as old as Islam.

So what can the Sinjar records tell us about the sacking of Stephen Coughlin?  Not much specifically, but generally, they can tell us a lot about the motivations of the foreign fighters who have travelled to Iraq over the last several years.  The increased participation in jihad by Libyans is well known, and upon incorporation of the LIFG (Libyan Islamic Fighting Group) into al Qaeda, senior leadership in the LIFG stated their reason for sending so many fighters to Iraq.

…our  brothers  are  in  need  of  the  backing  and  aid  of  the  Muslim  peoples,  with  their  bodies  and  wealth,  with  shelter  and  prayer,  and  with  incitement….  There  is  no  way  to  establish  and  preserve  states  other  than  Jihad  in  the  Path  of  Allah  and  Jihad  alone….This  is  the  path,  and  anything  else  is  from  the  whispers  of  Satan.

It  is  with  the  grace  of  God  that  we  were  hoisting  the  banner  of  jihad  against  this  apostate  regime  under  the  leadership  of  the  Libyan  Islamic  Fighting  Group,  which  sacrificed  the  elite  of  its  sons  and  commanders  in  combating  this  regime  whose  blood  was  spilled  on  the  mountains  of  Darah,  the  streets  of  Benghazi,  the  outskirts  of  Tripoli,  the  desert  of  Sabha,  and  the  sands  of  the  beach.

Finally, formal changes in doctrine are recommended by the authors at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point as a result of the Sinjar records, when they state that:

The  Syrian  and  Libyan  governments  share  the  United  States’  concerns  about  violent  salafi-jihadi  ideology  and  the  violence  perpetrated  by  its  adherents.   These  governments,  like  others  in  the  Middle  East,  fear  violence  inside  their  borders  and  would  much  rather  radical  elements  go  to  Iraq  rather  than  cause  unrest  at  home.   U.S.  and  Coalition  efforts  to  stem  the  flow  of  fighters  into  Iraq  will  be  enhanced  if  they  address  the  entire  logistical  chain  that supports  the  movement  of  these  individuals—beginning  in  their  home  countries  –  rather  than  just  their  Syrian  entry  points.

Coughlin was doing his job, and for that he was sacked.  Yet government sponsored institutions such as West Point are operating under the assumption that they need to tell the truth about the jihad that is currently being waged.  As observed by LTC Joseph C. Myers:

“Islam is a religion of peace” is fine for public policy statements, but is not and cannot be the point of departure for competent military or intelligence analysis … it is in fact a logical flaw under any professional research methodology … you have stated the conclusion before you have done the analysis.

The bureaucracy at the Pentagon has allowed political talking points to cloud their judgment.  Coughlin, a needed and highly qualified expert, is the target of this clouded judgment – and the militant jihadists have claimed yet another victim, this time by using stooges at the Pentagon to do their bidding.

At my request, Jack Holt kindly made a transcript available from the bloggers interview with Colonel Rice who leads the Army Wounded Warrior Program.  I was unavailable to participate in the interview, but here is a sample.

CHARLES “JACK” HOLT (chief, New Media Operations, OASD PA): All right, sir. Thank you very much.

COL. RICE: All right, well thank you for inviting me to talk to you about the U.S. Army Wounded Warrior Program. I’m honored to lead the U.S. Army Wounded Warrior Program and to serve the nation’s severely wounded, injured and ill soldiers and their families. This progress is here to serve those who have given so much to this country through their service.  The U.S. Army Wounded Warrior Program follows the war ethos, “I will never leave a fallen comrade.” We assist and advocate for severely wounded soldiers and their families for as long as they need us, wherever they are located. The primary way the U.S. Army Wounded Warrior Program makes a difference in their lives — in the lives of the severely wounded soldiers and their families, is by taking the time to really listen to their needs.  Every soldier in this Program is assigned a specialist who gives them  personalized recovery assistance in navigating government and non-profit  organizations on their behalf to ensure they get the help and support their families need. Our soldiers gave us their best, and we now remain committed to  giving them ours.  The U.S. Army Wounded Warrior Program is part of a larger Army initiative that is focusing on providing more comprehensive services to our soldiers and their families. We are in the forefront of an important transformation that is building the health care model for the future for the military’s wounded warriors.  For more information on this program, or to obtain support services, any soldier or his loved one can call: 1-800-237-1336. They can also visit our website at: www.aw2.army.mil, where I recently posted the first entry in our new Army Wounded Warrior blog. Please take the time to learn more about the Program, our dedicated staff, and the severely wounded soldiers we serve. As director of the Army Wounded Warrior Program, my duty is also my honor, and I will continue to work every single day to make sure that no soldier is left behind.

Read the whole interview.  Those who have followed this humble blog for a while know that this is a pet issue of mine, this issues of wounded warriors, caring for our fallen and injured, and properly managing our health care for these brave men.  Regarding the so-called Walter Reed scandal, I have weighed in that General Weightman was probably not the right man to sack when the scandal broke.  The problems were an ineffective and inefficient Department of Defense bureaucracy that didn’t support the wounded warrior when he left Walter Reed and went home, not when he was there.  But be that as it may, the message today was that we are under management that cares and understands that the DoD must treat this holistically.

The advancements in battlefield medical care (e.g., Navy Corpsmen, Marines qualified as combat lifesaver, etc.) have ensured a drop in battlefield deaths, and yet a commensurate increase in battlefield wounded and “disabled.”  The goal, then, is to ensure that the term “disabled” doesn’t really apply – to rehabilitate, to retrain, and to enable.  May God grant them success.

As one final followup item, my regular readers also know that TBI (traumatic brain injury, the signature wound of the war due to IEDs) is a pet concern of mine.  Here are two very interesting links for your study.

Dog Helps TBI Victim
Battlefield Brain Injury: The Lessons from Iraq (highly technical article written by an M.D.)

Captain Tim Hsia, U.S. Army, has written a thoughtful and provocative article at the Small Wars Journal Blog entitled Intelligence Collection and Sharing. Captain Hsia begins by cataloging the sundy reasons for the paucity of good local and regional intelligence and other information.

When a unit assumes battle space within Iraq the first thing that a commander receives from his higher headquarters is a plethora of maps detailing major avenues of approach, religious divides, key figures, demographics, key infrastructure, etc. However, much of the intelligence is outdated or watered down, and the source of this data is often unattributed. The source of this intelligence is necessary in order to winnow the chaff from the wheat. The intelligence received from higher headquarters can come from multiple sources, which oftentimes can be suspect and unverifiable. For example, is this intelligence derived from an Iraqi Army soldier, Iraqi policeman, neighborhood councils, street vendor, coalition signal assets, or from the previous military units who have operated within the current Area of Operations? Additionally, this initial trove of intelligence oftentimes provides just the basics and does not delve into more important issues that commanders need to know, such as the amount of money U.S. forces have spent developing the local infrastructure, the number of discontinued projects and reasons for their discontinuance, the quality of local leaders, and the attitudes of those leaders toward the U.S. military.Counterinsurgencies are not won by more soldiers, cutting edge technology, or more lethal weapon systems. Rather insurgents are defeated when the pacifying force fully understands the local citizenry, when the people identify with the pacifying force, and when there is an abundance of timely information which allows the pacifying force to apply their intelligence to operations that result in overturning and disrupting insurgent activity. Despite the great advances in the U.S. military’s ability to leverage technology to gain intelligence, it has been less successful in storing and synchronizing the historical data compiled during the past several years in its campaigns in the Middle East.

When a unit redeploys to the states they usually dump all of their electronic files to their counterparts in no systematic or coherent manner. This is the ideal situation, though if they are on a more limited timeline they might just pass off the most essential information. With units being continually shifted around Iraq with little or no notice to respond to increased violence in different areas, it has been almost impossible for units to properly pass off their intelligence to the next battle space owner or more importantly to future units that will operate in their sector. At best the problem a commander faces is an abundance of information that is improperly cataloged. Oftentimes however it is the worse case scenario in which commanders and diplomats encounter, a difficult situation where they have little to no information regarding a region or locale

As a sidebar note, if Captain Hsia is arguing for a small footprint model of counterinsurgency, he has history with which to contend (the problems in Operation Iraqi Freedom II and III caused by inadequate force size and force projection, as well as the problems in Afghanistan from the same). But continuing with the point of his article, he advocates a rather remarkable solution to this problem.

A way to remedy the chaotic state of intelligence management is to create a central intelligence collection platform that will allow any unit to upload operation summaries, economic analysis, tribal networks, environmental analysis, and graphical overlays into a central site that future commanders can access when they assume an assigned battle space. Currently all military units in Iraq and Afghanistan have access to a worldwide SIPR (secure Internet protocol router) network which allows them to access, view, and transmit secret information. Expanding this network to encompass a more centralized program of data sharing would not require any additional hardware. A fusion of geography and intelligence within a centralized network can ensure that commanders arrive at any location with the necessary intelligence derived from years of work by previous agencies and military units that have already provided a framework for understanding the enemy and the people in his assigned area. Commanders could then be spared the countless man hours recollecting data that has already been captured thru blood, sweat, and tears. A solution to the current intelligence blackhole would be to collect, store, and sift this data into a intel site organized in a manner replicating stock market data.

The appeal for such a system is strong. I started the category The Anbar Narrative in order to begin to capture snippets of perspectives and information regarding the campaign in Anbar in its various manifestations. I have exchanged perspectives with Lt. Col. Gian Gentile at the Small Wars Journal in which I have taken the position that the campaign in Iraq can be at least partially categorized as a counterinsurgency, while he has clearly said multiple times that it is only a civil war. Gentile’s perspective doesn’t affect the Anbar narrative, but it does go to show that the region and locale within Iraq can deeply affect the way a participant sees the situation. In Anbar and to the East around Ramadi, the Anbar narrative became all about tribes “flipping.” In Fallujah, tribal sheikhs were irrelevant and kinetic operations, gated communities and biometrics were the order of the day, and the muktars were much more important than the sheikhs. To the West in Haditha, fighters from Syria were problematic and earthern berms were necessary to isolate the area from outside influences. In Basra, the story is one of competing Shi’a gangs and thugs in a struggle for power. In Kirkuk there is a mixed Sunni, Shi’a and Kurdish population, and like Baghdad, civil war might be a better description of the circumstances. No single narrative fully explains the complexity of the Iraq experience. Combined with personalities, monies spent successfully and wasted, and other exigencies of the battle space, one can easily be overwhelmed by the data and information. And if we cannot even get our history right while the campaign is ongoing, how can we expect to pass on more particular and detailed information with precision?But the solution Captain Hsia profers is overwhelming as well. Note well what is being advocated. Graphical overlays, potential enemy information, (probably) census information, operational summaries, and on the list goes. All of this would have to be in a database, searchable on name (enemy), operational details (e.g., what were the locations and patrol sizes when IEDs were encountered, were distributed operations successful against enemy snipers, etc.). This means that such a database would have to be a relational database. This means that those who enter the information and access the information would have to be trained in this relational database (search query criteria, required entry information and formatting, etc.). This means that in order to deploy such a system across the armed forces in a consistent manner, a defense contractor will be at work for years to develop such a system and training for its operation would be implemented only over subsequent years in order to put it to use.We have noted with lament that the U.S. armed forces is at war, and the public has not yet mobilized for this war. Defense Secretary Gates is having trouble deciding to wean the Army off of a fifty year old cold war by re-deploying from the European theater, and the Afghanistan campaign suffers from a lack of force projection. And yet we are discussing millions and years more to deploy an integrated relational database for battle space intelligence!We like the idea, but we are realistic about it. It pays to profer the idea when its need is seen, but it also pays to point out the scope of the project. This scope is likely to kill the project before it ever gets off the ground.