Small Wars Journal

We’re Finally Letting the Middle East Fight its Own Battles

Thu, 01/18/2018 - 9:41pm

We’re Finally Letting the Middle East Fight its Own Battles by David Ignatius – Washington Post

FORT POLK, La. - In training exercises in a mock Afghan village constructed here on a base amid swampland, the U.S. Army is applying the military lesson of the war against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq: Help your partners beat the enemy, but don’t try to do the fighting yourself.

Letting others fight the battle hasn’t been the American way in modern times, to our immense national frustration. The U.S. military became bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan, much as it had a generation earlier in Vietnam, by trying to reshape societies with U.S. firepower. For the military, the lesson from these quagmires is to step back — and help local forces with training, advice and air power.

Fort Polk is a final warmup for the 1st Security Force Assistance Brigade, one of the Trump administration’s most innovative military experiments. About 1,000 soldiers are being trained here this month before deploying this spring to Afghanistan. The preparatory exercises all focus on the same basic theme: Step back and insist that partners do the front-line combat…

Read on.