Advice on advisers
INTEL DUMP
[Phillip Carter, Wednesday October 18, 2006 at 6:36pm EST]
America's main strategy in Iraq today calls for the "standing up" of Iraqi security forces so that we can "stand down" America's presence there. Our military has fielded teams of advisers to accomplish this, embedding or assigning advisers with Iraqi army, police, national police, and other governmental agencies. Unfortunately the mission is easier described than done. Three articles in today's Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, and Slate take the military to the woodshed for the way it's conducted the advisory mission.
On the front page of today's Wall Street Journal, Greg Jaffe describes many of the problems impeding adviser teams in Iraq from accomplishing their mission. He cites training shortfalls, equipment problems, and an institutional unwillingness to put the military's best and brightest officers on the job:
"Internal Army reviews and interviews with dozens of advisers show that, thus far, the Army hasn't treated the advisory program as a priority. The job has often fallen to the military's less seasoned second team: reservists, guardsmen and retirees called back to active duty. A 48-page Army study, finished in May and marked "For Official Use Only," concluded that 10- to 12-man advisory teams are too small and "do not have the experience to advise in the various areas they are assigned."
The teams have had to scrounge for equipment that is routinely allocated to big combat units. Advisers going through training today are warned in a PowerPoint briefing: "You will not have all the radios, weapons, night vision devices and field gear issued to a U.S. battalion."
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To oversee the new training for advisers, the Army recently tapped one of its 10 combat divisions, the 1st Infantry Division, which had been scheduled to return to Iraq. Instead, its top officers and senior enlisted soldiers will remain at Fort Riley, Kan., to train advisers. When rebuilding the training program, the service started with a "blank piece of paper," says Brig. Gen. James Yarbrough, the division's assistant commander.
Top Army officials also are trying to change a culture that discourages good officers from taking advisory posts. Over the past decade, the path to success has been through conventional combat jobs in big brigades. Gen. Peter Schoomaker, the Army's top officer, uses a track analogy to describe the problem. The Army, he says, is full of specialists, or "single-event people." To prevail in today's wars, he says, he needs "pentathletes" with a broader range of experiences."
Over on the Los Angeles Times op-ed page, conservative writer Max Boot picks up on the "B Team problem", as Jim Fallows described it. He argues that victory in Iraq can only be achieved by investing orders of magnitude more manpower — and better manpower — in the advisory effort.
"We have more than 140,000 troops in Iraq, but fewer than 4,000 of them act as advisors. There are barely enough to go around for higher-level Iraqi headquarters; there are no "embeds" available to consistently operate at the company and platoon level, where most of the action occurs. The Iraqi police forces are even more neglected.
What's more, some of the best and brightest American officers are being steered away from Iraqi units. Everyone in the U.S. armed forces knows that the way to the top is to command American units, not to advise foreign units — even if the latter task is more difficult and more important.
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In a telephone interview from Baghdad, Brig. Gen. Terry Wolff, commander of the Coalition Military Assistance Training Team, defended the advisory program by pointing out that it has become better over time. A school has been established at Ft. Riley, Kansas, where advisory teams receive 60 days of training before being sent to Iraq. This is a big improvement over the days when so-called military training teams would be established on the spot with members who were strangers to one another and had received no specialized training.
But just because the program is better doesn't mean it's adequate. There is still a need for many more first-rate U.S. advisors to work with Iraqi army and police units down to the platoon level. T. X. Hammes, a retired Marine colonel, believes that 20,000 to 30,000 advisors are needed and that we should be sending officers who have successfully led American battalions and brigades. "We're at least an order of magnitude off," Hammes told me. "If our main effort is advisory, why aren't our best people going to become advisors?"
And finally, in response to sectarian violence over the weekend, I write today in Slate that America must radically change its military posture in Iraq, and it must also significantly bolster its advisory effort.
"Although the United States has nearly 30,000 troops near Balad, it does not have any troops in the city on a full-time basis. During the last two years, the U.S. presence in Iraq has consolidated in massive superfortresses like Anaconda and shut down dozens of smaller bases and outposts across the country. This operational withdrawal was meant to make the U.S. presence more efficient and to reduce the risk of having small units deployed on small bases where they might be vulnerable to insurgent attack; it also forced the Iraqis to become more self-sufficient in securing their own cities. Unfortunately, this has come at a price. When a massive flare-up happens in places like Balad, Tikrit, or Kirkuk, all cities without a permanent U.S. presence, our military must respond from afar, its effectiveness and responsiveness limited by distance.
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This violent weekend proves that America needs to radically change its course in Iraq, while some form of victory still lies within our grasp. First, the U.S. military must reverse its trend of consolidation and redeploy its forces into Iraq's cities. Efficiency and force protection cannot define our military footprint in Iraq; if those are our goals, we may as well bring our troops home today. Instead, we must assume risk by pushing U.S. forces out into small patrol bases in the middle of Iraq's cities where they are able to work closely with Iraqi leaders and own the streets. Counterinsurgency requires engagement. The most effective U.S. efforts thus far in Iraq have been those that followed this maxim, like the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment in Tal Afar, which established numerous bases within the city and attacked the insurgency from within with a mix of political, economic, and military action.
Second, the United States needs to reinforce the most successful part of its strategy so far—embedding advisers ($) with Iraqi units. Our embedded advisers achieve more bang for the buck than any other troops in Iraq; one good 12-man adviser team, living and working with an Iraqi unit, can bolster an entire Iraqi battalion. Without these advisers, Iraqi army and police units remain ineffective—or worse, they go rogue. However, these advisers are drawn primarily from the reserves and the staff ranks, not from America's military elite, so they represent the B Team of today's military talent. The military needs to invest its best people in the job. If necessary, it should shatter existing units to cull the best officers and sergeants—those selected for command positions—for this critical duty. And the United States cannot afford to lavish advisers on the Iraqi army alone, as it has largely done since 2003. It must extend the embedding program to the police and the Iraqi government, down to the province and city level, to bring critical services like security, electricity, and governance to the Iraqi people.
At the same time, we must recognize the limitations of our strategy to raise the Iraqi forces—it is a blueprint for withdrawal, not for victory. At best, it will enable us to substitute Iraqi soldiers and cops for American men and women. But simply replacing American soldiers with Iraqi soldiers and cops will not end the insurgency; it will merely transform it into a civil war where the state-equipped army and police battle with Sunni and Shiite militias, with Iraqi civilians frequently caught in the crossfire.
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