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Skriven 2006-06-20 16:32:00 av Alan Hess
Ärende: veterans - your opinion
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http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.officer20jun20,0,2589527.
story?coll=bal-pe-opinion

From the Baltimore Sun
Military must share blame


By Erik Swabb

June 20, 2006

It is convenient for military leaders to blame civilian officials for wars that
go south. The armed forces did it after Vietnam, citing civilian interference
with military decisions.

In April, a group of retired generals called for the removal of Defense
Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. The generals asserted that U.S. forces were
capable of suppressing the Iraqi insurgency after the invasion - they just
needed civilian leaders who listened to military advice and provided a
sufficient number of troops.

The generals' attacks, however, mask a dirty truth: The military deserves its
fair share of blame for shortcomings in Iraq. Because of the failure of the top
military leadership to institutionalize the lessons of the Vietnam War, initial
U.S. forces in Iraq were not prepared to wage counterinsurgency. As a result,
we are facing a more difficult battle.

After the Vietnam War, the military's future leaders drew one main lesson: Do
not fight another war like it. The young officers who served there and later
rebuilt the military in the 1980s were loath to combat insurgencies, which they
considered messy, distracting struggles. These leaders focused instead on war
with the Soviet Union and built the world's premier conventional military.

In the process, however, priceless lessons from Vietnam about counterinsurgency
warfare were lost. New officers in the 1980s and 1990s, who later assumed key
leadership positions, did not study counterinsurgency. Only the Green Berets
retained institutional knowledge because of their Special Forces mission.

Although post-Cold War conflicts such as Somalia and Bosnia should have
indicated that nonconventional warfare would increase in importance, military
leaders continued to train for conventional conflicts. Consequently, U.S.
forces that invaded Iraq in 2003 were ill-prepared for counterinsurgency.

When my Marine unit prepared to deploy to Iraq in September 2004, we followed
the standard predeployment training at the time. We conducted cultural
awareness classes and practiced operations such as manning checkpoints and
searching houses. But this basic training was not grounded in a larger
understanding of complex counterinsurgency warfare.

We did not understand certain dynamics at play, such as the notion that
excessive force protection alienates the populace, reduces intelligence and,
therefore, makes one less secure. We knew how to raid a house but not how to
build local relationships and learn where insurgents were hiding. We did not
know these crucial aspects of counterinsurgency because we had never received
training about them.

Some of the most useful "training" that I received was a 15-minute conversation
with my best friend, who was an intelligence officer in another unit. He told
me that some Green Berets had recently given him some advice. They told him to
focus on helping Iraqis, as opposed to conducting aggressive patrols and asking
accusatory questions about insurgents. The Special Forces soldiers promised
that intelligence would be forthcoming.

After months of fruitless operations, I decided to try this strategy. It worked
wonders. Locals told us the locations of weapon caches, roadside bombs and
insurgent cell leaders that previous units had missed. In retrospect, it is
unbelievable that I learned more about counterinsurgency from a 15-minute
conversation than I did from two years of military training. I only wish that I
had known this strategy from the beginning.

My experience was no doubt repeated throughout the initial wave of U.S.
deployments for occupation duties. Units with no understanding and little
training in counterinsurgency deployed to Iraq. Some units managed because of
sheer professionalism and ingenuity. Others did not.

In the end, U.S. forces did the best job possible considering their lack of
training. However, most would agree that a military that had incorporated
counterinsurgency into its training for the last 25 years would have been more
successful battling the insurgency in its critical early days.

Regardless of how the Iraq war ends, the senior military leadership again will
be faced with a decision like the one after the Vietnam War: Institutionalize
the lessons or say the military will not engage in another fight like Iraq
again.

Lest military leaders forget, they do not choose which wars they fight. Their
civilian leaders do.

Erik Swabb is a former Marine infantry officer who served in Fallujah from
September 2004 to March 2005. His e-mail is cswabb9@yahoo.com.

Copyright + 2006, The Baltimore Sun | Get Sun home delivery

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