Scoring the Counterinsurgency

This post features commentary on the following editorial:
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=267664846901795

This editorial rehashes one of the basic premises of a counterinsurgency: tactical success does not equal strategic victory. But if the cynical, manipulative liberal media reported "the truth" (i.e. our ongoing tactical success) and did their part to support the troops, then we could sustain the political will to win the war.

I disagree with the editorial's wholehearted blame of the media. While there are many in the media who use their position to push an agenda, they also respond to demand. They have a readership and they know their market; they know what sells and what people want to read. The American public is interested in American lives affected by the war, for good or for ill, and that's why you see a preponderance of reporting on American tragedies. The administration and military leaders are equally at fault for bungling public expectations and feelings for the war. In one sense, an insurgency is a long-term siege of a nation's political will. When President Bush landed on the USS Abraham Lincoln in May of 2003 to declare "Mission Accomplished" to the nation and world, he opened wide a gate for the besieging terrorists. Our wall of credibility sustained a lot of damage. Manipulating patriotism to gain support by sugar-coating, euphemizing, or ignoring what's really going on will eventually backfire, because people do not like being made fools of themselves--it's simple disrespect. For example, not allowing generals to use the word "insurgency" to describe the increasing violence back in 2003 only provoked skepticism and cynicism later on. Anthony Cordesman, a military scholar says this: "...there is only so much shallow spin that the American people or Congress will take. It isn't a matter of a cynical media or a people who oppose the war; rubbish is rubbish. By the time we finish "spinning," we deprive ourselves of credibility, domestically and internationally." I think what you see in the media is part backlash against this loss of credibility. A classic recent example of this: Senator McCain's publicity stunt two months ago in a Baghdad market. Once the front-runner in the Republican party, since that incident McCain's ratings have dropped.

The other problem with the editorial is their complete reliance on metrics. Keeping score is an over-simplification of the fight. Our task is not to kill more terrorists than they kill Soldiers--there will always be more terrorists. Our job is to protect the people, foster capable and legitimate local security forces to augment and eventually replace undermanned US positions, mentor the legitimate local government to provide rule of law and essential services, and help the local Iraqi government and security forces win popular support to forge a populace resistant to insurgents. At the strategic level, we must help reconcile sectarian rivalry that has stymied government efficacy and wilted public perception and establish government institutions to make things work. Time and time again I've seen bureaucratic bean counters lose the forest for the trees over metrics, stats, and yellow gumballs on PowerPoint slides. I'm not advocating doing away with all metrics, because they are useful and play a role, just consider them in context. In its rush to blame, this editorial fails to keep the big picture in perspective. A great example of this is how the editorial uses numbers to expose the lie that life was better under Saddam. I'm here to say that life was a lot better for Iraqis under Saddam. I know because they tell us this all the time. The fact is those stats are meaningless to your average Iraqi who's dealing with 120 degree heat with no A/C, and thinks that the Shia government has abandoned him, or Sunni car bombs are disrupting his electricity--who is on the fence toward supporting the local police or the local insurgent. My point is that in order to win we're dealing with a precarious, subjective balance of human perception and popular will, which is extremely difficult to quantify. Killing hundreds of terrorists in Al Anbar didn't get us anywhere until we managed to gain the popular support of the local tribes, who brought security to the people, whose actions proved to the people that they offered a better future than dismal uncertainty of random violence. Our success in Ramadi had nothing to do with a body count. "Keeping score" loses sight of what we really need to accomplish, and won't necessarily get us any closer to that objective.

Ugandans

This past month, a troop of Ugandan security guards and their war-profiteering US handlers took Camp Ramadi by storm. It's impossible to get upset with the Ugandans, even though they are very serious and professional about their mission of denying everyone who forgot their ID card that day access to the PX, dining facility, helipad, gym, Camp Ramadi R/C car derby raceway, and other facilities inside the camp. Their broad, serious faces break into such big grins that I can't get upset at them for the inconvenience in the name of force protection they've brought to our lives.

Yet despite their cheeriest smiles, I can't help getting upset. Why are they here? I can't think of any event that triggered the security lockdown on Camp Ramadi. They have to be expensive, because there are a lot of them, not counting the additional living space and infrastructure upgrades we've had to make. There's enough pointless waste around here, I don't like being reminded three or four times daily about the the bundles of taxpayer money that's being dutifully dumped into this thing like landscapers jostle bucketloads of leaves into a leaf shredder. You may think all this money is going to the war, but it's pretty amazing where a lot of it ends up.

SIGACTs

SIGACT is military jargon for significant activity. Like most Army acronyms, it can be juggled to mean different things and morph into various parts of speech. A SIGACT is a concise report of pertinent facts concerning any enemy-focused event that occurs throughout the day. They range from an isolated, harmless sniper shot to a car bomb that kills 20. They can be good news, such as the safe discovery and neutralization of an IED or enemy weapons cache; but are mostly bad, like a successful IED attack that kills a Soldier or Iraqi policeman. Writing them is a critical duty of the tactical operations center--the task force command and control center.


Yesterday, June 8th, there were only two SIGACTs in all of Ramadi and the greater surrounding area. This is astounding. A year ago, Ramadi was a lost cause. It was probably the most dangerous, most lawless city in the world. It routinely grabbed the highest percentage of SIGACTs throughout all Iraq. Yesterday, however, some Marines downtown found a rusty artillery shell and a belt of ammo under a trash pile with a metal detector. Then on the outskirts there was a truck bomb that struck a checkpoint on the highway and badly wounded some Iraqi policemen. But after that, not a single IED exploded, and nobody was shot at, and nothing else was reported. Anywhere. The small cache type finds are still somewhat common--forgotten remnants of the lawless days when insurgents ruled the city. They had weapon and ammunition stocks hidden everywhere to facilitate attacks. They would burst into the homes of citizens and stick their AKs in the faces of the kids to make the father bury artillery shells in the backyard--and keep them from telling us about them. When the Iraqi police finally rolled in and kicked the insurgents out, they brought in these caches by the Ford F-350 truckload. Now the insurgents are out of the city, they've stepped up their VBIED campaign.


Vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices--"vee-bids". Now that the IP and the people who love them deny insurgents access to the city, the terrorists changed their tack. Now they infiltrate massive truck bombs targeting innocents and infrastructure. They like to add big tanks of chlorine, but that's just a headline-grab; the chlorine that doesn't evaporate just gives some folks a sore throat for while and gives the media something to yak about. Last week they went for an Iraqna cell phone tower, but ended up destroying five homes and wrecking a few families. The one three days ago that hit a highway patrol station a few klicks outside the base was so large that the concussion knocked down ceiling tiles and filled the on-base gym with dust--it destroyed my workout and wounded some patrolmen (one lost a leg), but luckily no one was killed except the driver.

These attacks are senseless. They're like the Nazi buzz-bombs over London at the end of WWII. A big middle finger to the people of Ramadi who are starting to enjoy water and electricity again for the first time in years. They're an Al Qaeda ploy to prove to the people that they can still control their lives. The city is getting wise, though, and a new rule by the mayor and other tactics will hopefully push these attacks further outside the densely populated areas. It is easy to see how willing the people are to suffer major inconveniences for security--waiting in long lines at checkpoints, Iraqi Army and police clearing their homes again: they don't want another VBIED to detonate in their local market. Impinges on certain civil liberties are easy to bear when the alternative is rampant violence and arbitrary destruction.

But now, the people are starting to come to terms with the uneasy peace over Ramadi right now. A few days ago our neighborhood of Ramadi had their first soccer tournament on a new field. City municipal workers are coming out of the woodwork and fixing water pipes and electrical lines on their own now that they won't get sniped at, kidnapped, or beheaded for doing so. It's kind of unfortunate we don't have positive SIGACTs: official reports that tabulate every time some kids had a soccer game without getting offered 10 bucks and some candy to put a bomb in a hole where humvees drive, or when we finally removed all the concrete barriers and concertina wire barring all the storefronts (now open) along a former IED alley, or when the municipal workers tested the local water tower and found out--amazingly--that it had no bullet holes and didn't leak like a giant colander on stilts. But that might make things too hectic in the TOC again--no one wants to go back to the time when there were 40-50 SIGACTs per day.

Big Red One

I have spent my entire, brief Army career in the 1st Infantry Division--the "Big Red One." Though I've had brief regrets about not being in an Airborne or Alpine unit, I am generally proud of being in the 1st Infantry Division. We have an illustrious history starting back in WWI, and we are the Army's oldest, continually serving combat unit. When the division headquarters moved back to Germany in 1996, they adopted the Army's Class A unit patch--a maraschino cherry red '1' on a shield crest of foliage green for the normal duty (camouflage) uniform to signify that we were an "expeditionary force" (ie. serving overseas). This was an anomaly; no other unit in the Army had this privilege (everyone else wears a subdued patch to fit the camouflage). When the rest of the division moved back to the States last year, my brigade, 2nd Brigade, 1st Infantry Division, remained the surviving expeditionary force, and we proudly kept our Big Red One patches on.


Last month, the Vice Chief of Staff of the Army apparently caught wind that we were the lone brigade in the Army wearing Class A patches. He sent an indignant order down to the rogue brigade to cease wearing the offending patch on 1 June. Now, figuring two new subdued "Big Black One" patches for each Soldier in the brigade (a few thousand), at roughly 5-7 dollars a patch, this decision will cost US taxpayers roughly $30,000 to supply the 2nd Brigade, 1st Infantry Division with the authorized patch--not to mention the pre-deployment investment of red one patches on a field of teal to match the Army's new high-tech digital camouflage uniform. The thing is, roughly six months from now we're going to "re-flag" as a different unit under the Army's plan to reorganize forces in Germany, and put on a brand new patch. The other thing is, the Army supply system couldn't move fast enough to match the fiat, so now we're patchless for the unforseeable future. If I'm lucky, I should get a big black one patch from the Army system as a souvenir before I leave Iraq.