... Based on American experiences in Korea, Vietnam, El Salvador and now in Iraq and Afghanistan, an advisory strategy can help the Iraqi Army and security forces beat Al Qaeda and protect their country. (Obviously, these are my personal views, and do not represent those of the Army.) However, doing so will require America's ground forces to provide at least 20,000 combat advisers for the duration of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — men and women specially equipped and trained to help foreign forces bear a greater share of the combat load.
Unfortunately, America's military did not have the advisory capacity it should have had after major combat operations ceased. The first attempt to create a new Iraqi Army was farmed out to private contractors. When that effort failed, and it became clear that the assistance needed to help the fledgling Iraqi Army far exceeded the capability of the Army's Special Forces, regular Army troops were called on to fill the gap. Given their lack of training, these soldiers did remarkably well, but it was always a stopgap measure...
Comments
Why Gian harms his credibility by citing me, I'm unsure. Nor do I know about "vast," varied perhaps, not necessarily vast. Either way, he and I agree on much including the inadvisability of an Advisor Corps and the fact that the Army and Marines must retain major combat operations as their primary focus.
However, in fairness, I also agree with John Nagl on the need for more flexible thinking, some Advisory expertise to be developed and retained in the Army and the fact that we need to be prepared for counterinsurgency efforts to be required of us in the future. While I strongly believe such operations on a large scale should be avoided by us when possible, war, unfortunately, does not always allow one to choose ones methodology.
Appropos of the Op-Ed, I'd point out that the Advisory effort in Viet Nam was really quite functional well prior to the election of Nixon and that it was essentially effective. It is also fact that the Army in Viet Nam changed course prior to the directive to "Vietnamize" the effort and thus the statement made by Nagl that it took a Presidential effort to do that is arguably incorrect. We may have mishandled the war but the Advisory portion was done fairly well by taking generally competent people, giving them minimal training and telling them to go do the job -- the same thing we're doing today.
I suggest that continued calls by many for the American people to continue to be patient and the apparent and likely response to those calls indicate to me that the people are being asked to underwrite a strategy that goes against the national psyche. Whether that should be the case or not is immaterial. It apparently is the case and should be a strong cautionary for future planning.
I agree with a posting from Ken White in a SWJ thread discussion on LTC John Nagls recent NY Times oped article on the need for an American Advisory Corps. Ken White, a retired American soldier with vast combat experience across the full spectrum of military operations, simply and clearly states that:
"I do not think the Army can afford an Advisory Corps."
That seems to me to be the fundamental problem at hand and not just with the issue of whether or not to establish an advisory corps but the overall condition of the American Army after 6 years and more of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Is anybody out there (that is to say, senior military leaders, political leaders, policy wonks, etc) really asking the hard questions about the state of our Army today. I hear such clinical, dispassionate talk by experts such as Anthony Cordesman who calmly proclaims that if violence increases in Iraq then Americas "military role will broaden." But I have to ask, what military and where will it come from? Experts like Cordesman, retired Generals like Jack Keane, experts like Mike OHanlon very easily talk about chunking a Brigade or two here to the south of Iraq, or into Afghanistan, but without deeply considering what the men and women of these combat brigades have gone through and what the future holds for them. As I see things, the future for the American Army by maintaining its current status and tempo of deployments does not look good: we are close (if not already there) to breaking.
LTC Nagl in his articulate and important oped in the NY Times falls into this group when he calmly tells the American people that they need to:
"be patient. In the 20th century, the average counterinsurgency campaign took nine years. The campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan are likely to run longer, and other commitments loom in this protracted struggle against Al Qaeda and its imitators."
I ask again, how does the American Army carry on in these wars for "9" more years, at least? Recent news reports that the combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan will be reduced thankfully from 15 to 12 months, but those reports also state that even after beeing reduced to 12 months, soldiers in those combat brigades can only expect 12 months back at home before they have to deploy again. The fact of the matter is, and we should all acknowledge this, is that the American Army is being ground down by these two wars. If that is the choice of our political masters and the American people toward a cause worth breaking the American Army over then so be it. I personally will continue to serve in whatever capacity told to do so. But we as an Army should at least be upfront and acknowledge what is really happening to us especially when we read LTC Nagls call for and advisory corps which would further place strain on an already heavily strained force.
And one last point on the important piece by LTC Nagl. I believe that his calling for an Advisory Corps, and the implicit suggestion that it should be the main effort of the American Army, shows the bankruptcy of our newly released operational doctrine, FM 3-0. In chapter 3 of that manual titled "Full Spectrum Operations" there are a total of 11 pages committed to explaining offensive, defensive, and stability and support operations (all three are now treated as equally important by the manual). Out of those 11 pages, 7 are dedicated to stability operations while only 4--I say again 4--are dedicated to the offense and defense. In my opinion the ability to conduct irregular war, counterinsurgency war, stability ops, etc must flow out, out, of a core competency of an army knowing how to fight. Sadly it seems to me that our new operational doctrine has this backward and turns this essential element of army doctrine on its head. If an infantry company commander sits down to read the new FM 3-0 to understand the overarching operational doctrine of which he is a part of, the manual ultimately informs him not how to fight, but how to occupy and build nations.
I imagine there are those out there reading my words saying things like "Gian, there you go again," you just dont get it!! But I also imagine that the Israeli Army thought they had "got things right" on the eve of their disastrous attack into southern Lebanon in summer 2006: simply stated: the Israeli Army did not fight well. Many, many years of conducting almost nothing but stability and support operations in the Palestinian territories had atrophied their conventional war fighting skills to the point where they could not carry out simple command and control at the brigade and battalion level, nor close coordination between tanks and infantry.
I fear the American Army is in a similar condition today and we should be worried. Lets think hard about the current state of our Army and where we are headed.