[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
cullen s efforts were enhanced by coaching teams that were deployed
across the theater to provide units with more tactical-level advice.53
" Formal and informal doctrine. The widespread dissemination of the new
COIN 9 eld manual, FM 3-24, provided an intellectual foundation for
new guidance (i.e., Multi-National Corps Iraq [MNC-I] commander
Lieutenant General Odierno s Counterinsurgency Guidance ). Infor-
mal doctrine, such as the Counterinsurgency Reader, which was a compila-
tion of key articles published in the Army s popular journal Military Re-
view, was issued in the summer of 2006. Both FM 3-24 and Military Review
were assigned in all the courses and available online as well as distributed
in hard copy.54
" Mature communities of practice. Online communities of practice, as dis-
cussed in previous chapters, had become common methods of informa-
tion sharing among commanders at all levels. In addition to the popular
CompanyCommand.com website, military and civilians in theater regu-
larly accessed Army-sponsored sites such as PlatoonLeader.com, West
Point s counterterrorism site, and the Combined Arms Center blog. An-
other popular nonmilitary site was the online Small Wars Journal blog, a
site run by two retired marines, Dave Dilegge and Bill Nagle. Dilegge de-
scribes their audience of nearly 400,000 as niche, . . . but one that spans
all ranks and increasingly non-DoD and Non-US. Moreover, many jour-
nalists and academia use the page for basic and more advanced re-
search. 55 The site hosts a number of well-respected theorists and practi-
tioners who regularly post articles and comments to the site. Petraeus s
COIN advisor also blogged on this site during the Surge to help people
better understand the strategy, and readership spiked during those
months. According to Dilegge, as of summer 2008, these posts from the
9 eld remain as the most popular and the most cited, re: ecting a desire
to better understand the emerging lessons and strategy. (Small Wars
Journal is working to publish the collection as a book.)
" Enhanced cultural awareness. Training to enhance cultural awareness
had been added at all levels of the system. A shift in focus toward under-
standing the human as well as the traditional military physical terrain
53. Kilcullen, Dinosaurs versus Mammals.
54. All volumes of Military Review are available online at http://usacac.army.mil/
CAC2/MilitaryReview/.
55. Dave Dilegge, personal correspondence with the author, 2008, Washington, DC.
184 " lifting the fog of peace
improved intelligence collection and interaction with locals and was a
prerequisite to implementing demographic targeting of insurgent net-
works.56 As one Army War College researcher observed, the recent focus
on cultural knowledge in counterinsurgency operations and tactics is a
welcome development insofar as it has allowed 9 eld commanders in Iraq
and Afghanistan to radically reassess the failed operations and tactics in
counterinsurgency in both these places. 57
These in-theater accelerants enabled the commander s intent to be
implemented more uniformly across time and space and also allowed for
rapid adaptation as required. The development and implementation of
these accelerants and the military successes of the Surge as a whole
re: ected the enhanced post-Vietnam learning capacity of the U.S. mili-
tary. Key adaptations and lessons learned by individual commanders,
such as methods for interacting with local leaders, patrolling techniques,
and network analysis, were shared online, collectively analyzed in theater
and back at the stateside schoolhouses, and incorporated into the coun-
trywide strategy.
The most obvious personi9 cation of this learning curve was General
Petraeus s ground commander, Lieutenant General Ray Odierno, who
issued the enlightened Counterinsurgency Guidance as MNC-I com-
mander in 2007. Odierno had been widely criticized for his heavy-
handed approach on his previous deployment as the Fourth Infantry Di-
vision commander. Far from the progressive MNC-I commander he had
become by 2007, his leadership as division commander in 2004 had
been, according to author/journalist Tom Ricks, almost the opposite of
Petraeus s 101st Airborne. 58 By 2007, however, Odierno was in lockstep
with General Petraeus, re: ecting the cycle of learning of the institution
as a whole.
In sum, by all accounts, the troops that Petraeus commanded were
better prepared to comprehend and operationalize his guidance than
they would have been in 2003. Still, despite the security gains made dur-
ing the 9 rst 18 months of the Surge compared to prewar levels of vio-
lence and stability, Iraq was still struggling. By summer 2008, with the
56. Demographic targeting refers to a method of tracking urban insurgents based
on their propensity to return to their rural hometowns. Tracking movements to and from
rural areas vis-à-vis knowledge of kinship lines helps identify insurgents and break up net-
works. Kilcullen, Dinosaurs versus Mammals.
57. Sheila Miyoshi Jager, On the Uses of Cultural Knowledge, Strategic Studies In-
stitute Published Monograph (Carlisle, PA: U.S. Army War College, 2007), http://www
.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/ssi/jager_cultural_knowledge.pdf.
58. Ricks, Fiasco.
Learning to Surge in Iraq " 185
U.S. presidential election in full swing, the political gains promised as
part of the Surge had not materialized, Iraqi prime minister Nuri al-
Maliki was calling for a timetable for withdrawal, and the U.S. military
was close to the breaking point from sustained rotations of troops and
matériel. This state of affairs suggests that bottom-up military learning is
a necessary but insuf9 cient condition for success in stabilization and re-
construction operations.
The Limits of the Learning System: The Challenge of
the Four-Block War
The key problem with the military s learning system in meeting today s
challenges is that it is observationally and tactically oriented and thus
does not work well beyond the environment of the so-called three-block
war. The three-block concept was best articulated by Marine Corps com-
mandant General Charles Krulak in 1997.
In one moment in time, our service members will be feeding and
clothing displaced refugees, providing humanitarian assistance. In
the next moment, they will be holding two warring tribes apart con-
ducting peacekeeping operations and, 9 nally, they will be 9 ghting a
highly lethal mid-intensity battle all on the same day . . . all within
three city blocks.59
Krulak s three-block war resonated with a generation of U.S.
war9 ghters who had increasingly found themselves conducting complex
and frustrating missions from Somalia to Kosovo that, in the words of
Major General Steve Arnold, may not be war, but sure as hell ain t
peace. 60 Although the U.S. Army was at the same time developing a sim-
ilar (if less pithy) doctrine called full-spectrum operations, the three-
block war image was simple and to the point. It gave troops a concep-
tual handrail and had a profound impact on the U.S. military s
operational and tactical mind-set. U.S. forces would no longer deploy
with an expectation for 9 ghting either a war or an other-than-war oper-
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]