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| Iraq |
| Understanding Current Operations in Iraq |
| 2007-06-26 |
| From Small Wars Journal I’ve spent much of the last six weeks out on the ground, working with Iraqi and U.S. combat units, civilian reconstruction teams, Iraqi administrators and tribal and community leaders. I’ve been away from e-mail a lot, so unable to post here at SWJ: but I’d like to make up for that now by providing colleagues with a basic understanding of what’s happening, right now, in Iraq. This post is not about whether current ops are “working” — for us, here on the ground, time will tell, though some observers elsewhere seem to have already made up their minds (on the basis of what evidence, I’m not really sure). But for professional counterinsurgency operators such as our SWJ community, the thing to understand at this point is the intention and concept behind current ops in Iraq: if you grasp this, you can tell for yourself how the operations are going, without relying on armchair pundits. So in the interests of self-education (and cutting out the commentariat middlemen—sorry, guys) here is a field perspective on current operations. |
| Posted by:Alaska Paul |
| #5 IMHO, it always comes down to the tribes and understanding how they work in the context of their environment and local history. Some commanders I see embrace that and they do well. Others try to treat the Arab like Americans and fail. They're just not there yet. We have to incrementally deprogram them - this is a long work in project. Unfortunately our 5 second sound byte generation of morons in office & much of a particular voting block prolly won't give us the time and lee way necessary to really crack this nut. |
| Posted by: Broadhead6 2007-06-26 21:28 |
| #4 Iraqis have proven that they will inform of terrorist safe-houses, as long as they feel protected in so doing. I don't believe that "hiding" is an infallible weapon. Search and destroy! |
| Posted by: Pheang Jones9468 2007-06-26 19:18 |
| #3 Moose, we have had interaction with the south inasmuch of the supplies/logistics came in there and the Shatt-Al-Arab denizens HAVE To know things are better since we came in. If they don't lean Iranian, we can win them over, IMHO. If they do, we can solve that too.... |
| Posted by: Frank G 2007-06-26 18:35 |
| #2 For my mind, the biggest question remains southern Iraq. It is the one part of the country where US forces have never been part of the "culture" of the place. While the British and other forces of the MNF have been there, their military culture and ours are very different in how they interact with the locals. The British have a bad habit of thinking they understand Arabs, and this can cloud their thinking, making them too willing to accept the less than desirable, because "It is the Arab way." The US, however, takes everything at face value. They do not assign values to people they know nothing about, good or bad. And when actions speak louder than words, a certain clarity is obtained. A sense of mutual honesty, as many of the illusions are set aside and you act polite, until evidence convinces you otherwise. So I think, in the long run, now that much of the West has been stabilized, and Baghdad and environs, along with the North are cooled, the US will have to spend considerable time in the South. Not especially in an aggressive manner. Just so that we become known to each other. It is to our great advantage that we do not leave a large region behind where Americans are known mostly from gossip, rumor, and tall tales. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2007-06-26 18:04 |
| #1 smart man |
| Posted by: Frank G 2007-06-26 13:09 |