The U.S. Army has done something remarkable in its new history of the disastrous first 18 months of the American occupation of Iraq: It has conducted a rigorous self-critique of how bad decisions were made, so that the Army won't make them again.
Civilian leaders are still mostly engaged in a blame game about Iraq, pointing fingers to explain what went wrong and to justify their own actions. That's certainly the tone of recent memoirs by Douglas Feith, the former undersecretary of defense, and L. Paul Bremer, the onetime head of the Coalition Provisional Authority. These were the people making policy, yet they treat the key mistakes as other people's fault. Feith criticizes Bremer and the CIA, while Bremer chides former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the military for ignoring his advice that the United States didn't have enough troops.
The Army can't afford this sort of retroactive self-justification. Its commanders and soldiers are the ones who got stuck with the situation in Iraq and had to make it work as best they could. And this internal history, published last month under the title "On Point II," testifies to the Army's strength as a learning organization. (This study covers May 2003 to January 2005. An earlier volume, "On Point," chronicled the initial assault on Baghdad.)...
Key Quote
Politicians repeat, ad nauseam, the maxim that "those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it." The U.S. Army is that rare institution in American life that is actually putting this precept into practice.
Links
On Point - Through 1 May 2003.
On Point II - May 2003 to January 2005.
Comments
Is the Army a learning organization? We must remember that the Army is a bureaucracy and that as a bureaucracy it fears change. Bureaucracies will change when it is in their interest to do so. The unique mission of the Army may require it to change more often than the other bureaucracies. This is the dilemma for the Army and its ability to be a learning organization.
Army FM 6-22, Army Leadership (2006), states "The Army, as a learning organization, harnesses the experience of its people and organizations to improve the way it operates. Based on their experiences, learning organizations adopt new techniques and procedures that get the job done more efficiently or effectively. Likewise, they discard techniques and procedures that have outlived their purpose. Learning organizations create a climate that values and supports learning in its leaders and people. Opportunities for training and education are actively identified and supported. Leaders have direct impact on creating a climate that values learning across everyones entire Army career."
Using the Army definition, it is apparent that the Army is and is not a learning organization. It is one in that it uses the experiences of people and units to create new TTPs. Soldiers are creative and have unique ways to solve problems. Historically, the challenge had been to get someone to listen to them. More recently, this has not been an issue. Experience from soldiers at all ranks is well received by most leaders. The fact that the COIN manual was sent to soldiers for feedback prior to publishing is one way this has been demonstrated.
I am currently enrolled in an Army school and it is the first generic Army school that I have attended where soldiers are expected to think critically. This is a huge improvement over what previous military courses had been like. I recently finished graduate school and rolled straight into this course. The types and levels of discussion were on par with my graduate course discussions.
Where the Army has and will continue to be challenged is through the practice of "discarding techniques and procedures that have outlived their purpose." I dont believe that just because something goes out of fashion that it needs to be thrown away. Rather, it should be shelved and saved for another day when it may be needed again. Future operations for the military may be more focused on stability operations but it does not mean that large-scale maneuver warfare is to be discarded. It is one tool of many that the Army must provide to meet any threat. The key for the Army is to take its lessons learned and transform the military to meet all threats. With that said, it also cannot discard the lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan when those missions wind down as was the case with Vietnam.
From my perspective, the Army has made some significant progress towards becoming a learning organization. As I move up the ranks, I believe that this mindset will move up as well with my fellow officers and as future leaders will continue to foster the environment for the Army to learn.
The views expressed in this blog are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.
MAJ Matt Kent
US Army
On Point II" makes this compelling argument about the Army in the first 18 months in Iraq. It argues--contrary to the Ricks et.al narrative of failure by the Army until Feb 07, and Ignatius in his oped muddles this point so as to focus on the production of FM 3-24 and implicitly the Anbar Awakening and the Surge-- that for the most part, across the board and with only some exceptions as early as the end of 2003 the American Army got it at the tactical level! "On Point II" states:
"The shift made by many units in 2003 and 2004--from the mentality of an Army that prided itself on its prowess in conventional combat operations to one that conducted full spec ¬trum counterinsurgency operations was challenging. Many of the dramatic changes required by this transition have been emphasized in this chapter, and they and other aspects of the full spec ¬trum campaign in Iraq will be documented in greater detail in the remainder of this study. While the new campaign was unexpected, it would be a mistake to characterize the Army as wholly unprepared for the new missions, threats, and objectives it faced after May 2003."
And pay particular attention to this statement about the Armys lack of formalized coin doctrine and absence of prior training on coin:
"In most cases, Army leaders and Soldiers made that transition in a relatively smooth fashion, despite the fact that they had not trained for the types of operations required in the new campaign."
And finally "On Point II" argues that:
"Without relying on doctrine or experience, US Army units transitioned to a practice of full spectrum operations that, by the end of 2003, followed many well-established principles of counterinsurgency warfare."
The second two quotes, moreover, make a powerful implicit point about how to structure the American Army for the future. Consider it this way. If the American Army had had FM 3-24 prior to March 2003 and if it had spent say 80% of its training time on resources on coin and nation building, how would the 3IDs march up to Baghdad looked under those counterfactual conditions? More to the point, should we be restructuring the American Army, as our new Stability Doctrine points us to, toward a force that will, as LTG Caldwell argues, not fight large battles anymore but instead operate amongst "the peoples of the world" in the lead of the "whole government" approach and with the capability as John Nagl argues to "change entire societies?" Or, should we transform the American Army out of its antiquated Cold War structure to one that can fight effectively at the higher end of the conflict spectrum and from that capability, when needed, step in another direction to do coin and stability operations? My read of the Armys "On Point II" points us to the latter since it was able to do just that almost immediately in the early months of the Iraq War.
The overall thrust of the book, ON Point II, and the essential strategic argument it makes is that even the best tactics practiced by competent tactical outfits can not make up for failed policies and high-strategies.