Unity of Effort

This is the editorial I mentioned in yesterday's entry. I think it is important enough to reproduce here:

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WONDER LAND
By DANIEL HENNINGER

'Unity of Effort'

January 12, 2007; Page A12

Immediately after the president's speech, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said, "I heard nothing new." Nothing? When Gen. David Petraeus takes command of U.S. forces in Iraq, it will mark the start of an historic turn in military strategy in Iraq and perhaps in U.S. war-fighting doctrine.

The U.S.'s primary problem in Iraq, manifest across 2006, has been an urban insurgency in a 30-mile radius around Baghdad and in Anbar province. The Petraeus command is the overdue beginning of the counterinsurgency.

This isn't a one-off effort as at Fallujah, but counterinsurgency as daily U.S. military policy. It is the product of an enormous amount of self-criticism and analysis done by military and civilian analysts in and out of government. It does not mean, as often suggested the past 24 hours, that 20,000 U.S. troops are now going to run out and look for gun battles with insurgents in back alleys.

In broadest outline, the plan divides Baghdad into nine districts, essentially neighborhoods. The job of providing daily security in each district will be undertaken by an Iraqi army brigade of several thousand soldiers, a U.S. support battalion of up to 1,000 troops, and most importantly, about 20 U.S. military "embeds" or advisers.

Some of us predicted late last year that advisory embeds would be part of the new Bush strategy on reading National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley's November memo of advice to the president in the New York Times. After a late November trip to Iraq, Mr. Hadley said four times in the memo that the U.S. should embed coalition forces with Iraq's army and dysfunctional police.

The source of this idea, in part, was a successful Marine experiment in Anbar province. Rather than attach just a single U.S. military adviser to an Iraqi commander at the division level, the Marines put advisers alongside Iraqi units down to the NCO level. They stayed with and fought with their Iraqi counterparts 24/7. And the Marines reported that the Iraqis fought with more confidence and effect, aka spine-stiffening.

In 2004, a similar but broader effort at integration between U.S. and Iraqi forces was planned in Anbar province by Marine Maj. Gen. James Mattis. The Mattis plan is summarized in the middle of the Army's new Counterinsurgency Manual, released just last month. The manual's drafting was overseen by Gen. David Petraeus, who will now direct the U.S. military effort in the neighborhoods of Baghdad. It's not a coincidence. The manual describes in detail the purpose, theory, tactics and problems (including spikes in violence and casualties) likely to emerge during the new counterinsurgency strategy.

At the end of the manual there is a bibliography of books, studies and articles on fighting insurgency. It includes classics, such as Alistair Horne's "A Savage War of Peace," but what's interesting is how many of them were published since 2003, amid the Iraq war. Out of this effort has emerged a "best practices" for the U.S. when fighting an insurgency, as now.

Whether the U.S. should have done this back when Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his foreign suicide bombers emerged is a legitimate question. The point is this: The Iraq violence has not been running like an untended open hydrant. Some of our best and brightest have been thinking hard about how to shut the valve. Last month AEI released a plan reflecting similar counterinsurgency ideas by military specialist Fred Kagan and the Army's former vice chief of staff, Gen. Jack Keane.

In November, the Bush administration joined the rethinking. The participants in that process looked at the whole range of criticisms and formal critiques of what the U.S. had been doing in Iraq to that point. They concluded the one thing that wouldn't change is the goal, mainly establishing a democratic government in Iraq. What would change, heretofore a nonsubject, were the strategic concept and the level of resources.

Some of this came out of Gen. Petraeus's Counterinsurgency Manual, some from U.S. commanders in the field and some from the military think tanks. Suggestions that had gotten a "no" before, now got a "yes."

Is it all a day late and a dollar short? Maybe. Some 20,000 more troops may be insufficient. The inevitable front-page casualty reports and blood-soaked photos may still drain the will of domestic pundits. But what we are seeing in the Petraeus command is the kind of step back that the military sometimes excels at. This the U.S. military at its potential best -- remaking itself, as it did with the transition to training a volunteer army after Vietnam.

It is not the least bit obvious that this counterinsurgency plan will fail, and only the most churlishly neurotic Bush hater would want it to. The stakes for the region and the war on terror have been described many times. There is another reason: How this ends will have an important effect on the morale of our officer corps, the people who must summon the gumption to protect us. They deserve a final chance to succeed. This is the chance.

An idea one finds in the counterinsurgency literature, crucial to the success of any such strategy, is known as "unity of effort." Basically, it means all oars pulling in the same direction. The Iraqi government, for instance, has told the U.S. it will stop interfering in the military's rules of engagement. Tuesday's victorious 10-hour battle on Baghdad's Haifa Street, by a combined U.S.-Iraqi force, looked like a successful test of unified effort. It remains to discover whether anything resembling unity of effort can be achieved along Constitution Avenue.

Nothing would more raise the tenor of this debate than if some member of the Democratic Party would take ownership of the subject of military doctrine in Iraq. On the evidence of their statements the past 24 hours, barely a Democrat exists with has a clue of what Gen. Petraeus is about to do or why.

Sen. Barack Obama, presidential second-runner, said, "We are not going to babysit a civil war." Democrats will get a chance soon at Senate confirmation hearings to question Gen. Petraeus. Babysitter is not the word he brings to mind. His appointment is the result of a ferment in American military thinking on Iraq that goes well past George Bush "alone." They should hear him out before deciding whether to support this effort, or remain in the opposition.

• Write to henninger@wsj.com

Waging Modern War

Sunday 1/14/07
2000

This week I passed the three month mark on my tour in Kuwait. Assuming I’m here for exactly a year, that means I’m 25% finished. Someone sent me an elaborate Excel spreadsheet as a joke. You put your arrival date and your return date in it, and it tells you how many days, hours, and meals are left to go. It has a pie chart that starts off showing a barren desert and gradually changes to a tropical paradise as the time goes by.

It’s amusing, but I don’t really look at it that way. How long I’m going to be here and when I go home are the last thing on my mind 99% of the time. Usually we’re so busy that I’m focusing on solving the issue of the moment. When there aren’t any “issues of the moment”, I’m trying to make some progress on longer term projects. And when I’m not doing that, I’m dealing with all the normal life maintenance tasks like eating, laundry, sleeping, communicating with friends and family, and occasionally even managing to study for my military education.

Actually I kind of like it here. Perhaps not the environment per se, but that goes with the job. What I like is being a part of the war, and being able to contribute to it. Despite all the debate at home, there’s a clear sense here that what we are doing is important and that it has an impact on American security. This theater is the center of gravity for the Army right now, and it’s where I belong.

There was an outstanding editorial in the Wall Street Journal a couple of days ago by Daniel Henninger. He explained in clear, concise terms the origin and importance of the new strategy in Iraq. Far from being an off-the-cuff desperation political move by President Bush, it’s the result of a lot of very serious thinking and analysis by a lot of very smart people, and it’s been coming for a long time. The approach is not new – people have been advocating it for years. It just took until now for their views to gain enough widespread attention and acceptance within the military and the rest of the government for it to reach the tipping point and get the policies implemented. It’s no accident that General Petraeus literally “wrote the book” on counterinsurgency. (well, not exactly wrote it, but he oversaw the production of the new Field Manual on Counterinsurgency.) It was published in December and now he’s coming here to put it into action.

The title of this entry comes from a book I’m reading for my military education. It’s by General Wesley Clark, and is about the NATO operation in Kosovo in the late 1990’s. It’s interesting, but I would not have chosen to read it right now if it was not required. There are at least a half-dozen more current and relevant books I’d like to read right now about counterinsurgency and the current war. But since I have to write a paper on this I’m reading it.

So far it has mainly been a primer in organizational politics, with the war in Yugoslavia as a backdrop for his political and bureaucratic maneuvering. It’s interesting in that light since many of the problems he faced are similar to the ones I face here, albeit on a much smaller scale and involving more mundane issues. Serving multiple masters, competing (and sometimes incompatible) priorities, complex organizational relationships in which people with differing agendas have influence or control over key factors to your success, and different perceptions of what constitutes success are just a few of the similarities.

It’s also interesting from the standpoint of the use of military forces to achieve political goals, without necessarily going to war per se. That’s the heart of the book, and probably where the most salient take-home lessons will come from.

For those of you who have an interest, here are a couple pictures of me in my room today spending some time reading the subject book. (And yes, that’s my Christmas tree, and no, I don’t plan to take it down soon. Just call me a redneck, I guess). But I like the soft light. I don’t usually have the overhead lights on at all except when I need them to read.


Waging Modern War I (blog)
Originally uploaded by hkp7fan.

Waging Modern War II (blog)
Originally uploaded by hkp7fan.

There’s not much new to report here other than passing that milestone. I’m now definitely one of the ones who’s “been here”. I more or less know my way around and can get my job done. When I first arrived everyone’s face was new, but now there are many familiar faces and names. I can spot the new people rotating in. In some ways the time has gone quickly, but in other ways it seems like I’ve been here a lot longer than three months. It probably has something to do with the fact that for so many years my work was just the same thing day in and day out, with the variety in my life coming from my personal circumstances. Now it’s just the opposite. The personal side of my life is very constrained and mostly monotonous, but the professional side is full of variety, things to learn, and new challenges every day.

So here’s to the next nine months – I have a lot I hope to accomplish in that time.

Mood: Relaxed
Music: Ten Years After - A Space In Time