General McCaffrey Iraq AAR
I find this enormously interesting.
McCaffrey must have read one of our old manuals. He said,
"There is no functional central Iraqi Government. Incompetence, corruption, factional paranoia, and political gridlock have paralyzed the state. The constitution promotes bureaucratic stagnation and factional strife. The budgetary process cannot provide responsive financial support to the military and the police---nor local government for health, education, governance, reconstruction, and transportation.
Mr. Maliki has no political power base and commands no violent militias who have direct allegiance to him personally---making him a non-player in the Iraqi political struggle for dominance in the post-US withdrawal period which looms in front of the Iraqi people."
I wrote many times that holding the first elections at national level rather than at local and regional levels was a gross error that will breed more problems than it solves. In other words the purple fingers were at minimum done too early.
McCaffrey then wrote,
"The dysfunctional central government of Iraq, the warring Shia/Sunni/Kurdish factions, and the unworkable Iraqi constitution will only be put right by the Iraqis in their own time---and in their own way. It is entirely credible that a functioning Iraqi state will slowly emerge from the bottom up"
The Special Forces required reading books that I studied in the 60s made it quite clear and offered concise explanations of why post-COIN civilian leadership must be built from the bottom up...and they explained equally well why building leadership from the top down will fail. David Galula's 1964 book, "Counterinsurgency Warfare" lists "Local Elections" as the 5th step. The 7th step is organizing a national political party.
Galula could have been writing about Iraq when he explains how and why corruption will quickly evolve when national leaders are elected first.
Even as we solved one set of problems we have created another equal or worse set of problems. The reason is our initial stand up of a free Iraq was flawed. We arranged national elections before local and regional elections. Were the latter held first, the national leadership would have risen like cream from politicians who had to have had a significant role in local security to be elected. That equates to accepting risk. The current national leadership is so risk adverse they disappeared for 2 months while the fighting raged.
As it now stands, the Iraqi national leadership does not have a "personal security" stake in a free Iraq and corrupt elements are predictably everywhere.
Some recipes smell bad just thinking about them.
There is much more to comment on. McCaffrey has learned much. In a recent email to our group, I sent a requirements list for a new class at West Point. It included reading Galula. Too bad they quit reading his book when they stopped studying Counterinsurgency warfare 25 years ago. And too bad they didn't realize SF never stopped studying the subject.
Another resource that would have been invaluable if used is the January 1966 DA Pamphlet 550-100, US Army Handbook of Counterinsurgency Guidelines For Area Commanders - An Analysis of Criteria.
Yet another is the November 1963, FM 31-22, US Army Counterinsurgency Forces. And of course the 1965 FM 31-21 Special Forces Operations and 1965 FM 31-20 Special Forces Operational Techniques.
While the Petraeus ghost writers slaved away, the answers they sought were readily available. Petraeus chose an Australian Army reserve Lt Col as his COIN advisor. Meanwhile the answers he was looking for were already prepared and available at the JFK Special Warfare Center and School (SWCS) at Ft Bragg. Now the much ballyhooed new COIN Manual does not work and is being rewritten based on old SF techniques.
I can't wait to see the plan to dismantle the corrupt Iraqi national government again and begin with elections at the bottom as we should have initially.
I have all of these books and a few more that I believe if used collectively would have had US troops marching victoriously in NYC 1-2 years ago. We have the solutions. We failed to keep teaching them. I have no doubt the piecemeal dismantling of SWCS contributed, as has the lack of SF trained career officers at the highest levels.
My greatest concern and McCaffrey seems to sense it too, is that we continue to dig the hole deeper. I find his caveats realistic.
uw |
