Bing West, author of The Village, The March Up and No True Glory was kind of enough to be interviewed by Small Wars Journal on the occasion of the release of his latest book The Strongest Tribe.
Francis J. 'Bing' West, originally from the Dorchester section of Boston, served as an infantry officer in the United States Marine Corps during the Vietnam War. A warrior-scholar, West authored an extremely influential study while a Visiting Research Associate at the Rand Corporation (1966 - 1968) entitled: "The Strike Teams: Tactical Performance and Strategic Potential". He served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs in the Reagan administration. He is a graduate of Georgetown University (BA) and Princeton University (MA), where he was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow. He is currently president of the GAMA Corporation, which designs wargames and combat decision-making simulations. West is a correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, appears on The News Hour on PBS and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. West has been to Iraq on 15 trips since 2003, embedding with over 60 battalions.
Small Wars Journal interview with Bing West (Part 1 of 2)
Small Wars Journal interview with Bing West (Part 2 of 2):
5. You have a long history of advocacy for combat advisers. Why the skepticism about our current and potential future adviser program?
We do not have consistent goals, rigorous selection and training or a set of measures and expectancies. From the start, the role of advisers in Iraq was ill-defined. In Vietnam, advisers were valued because they were the link to fire support. In Iraq, fights requiring fire support were rare. Some adviser teams improved Iraqi staff planning functions, while others set the combat leadership example by daily circulation on the battlefield. I saw some adviser teams where the rule was to be out on two patrols a day; I saw other teams where the rule was to coach the Iraqis on staff procedures and not leave the wire with less than four humvees.
The aggressiveness of adviser teams varied broadly because there was no shared standard about their proper role. In late 2006, the Iraq Study Group recommended replacing US brigades with a corps of advisers embedded in Iraqi units and supported by US firepower. Since that was the road not taken, the Iraq War provides few clues whether advisers with indigenous troops can substitute for US conventional units, assuming the advisers have a role in deciding promotions.
It is unclear whether the US command envisions advisers remaining with Iraqi units. It seems that as US combat units pull back, so will the advisers. The absence of advisers runs the risk that deterioration may creep in from the bottom up - fewer arrests, fewer patrols, taxing drivers at checkpoints, etc. But with the war winding down, Iraqi officials do not want the daily presence of pesky Americans. By removing advisers from the level where the insurgency is fought, the risk of American casualties will decrease, as will the supervision that limits corruption, inspires aggressive operations and provides a warning when conditions are falling apart.
Iraqis marvel at advisers who stride into IED-infested areas without blinking and raise holy hell when they catch anyone stealing or abusing civilians or jundis. The physical and moral fortitude of a protean adviser impresses hundreds of Iraqis and sets a standard they seek to emulate. It would be a grave mistake to pull out the advisers too early.
6. You were tough on the generals in The Strongest Tribe, but you really lit into Iraq war critics, citing the Haditha incident as an example. Why this critique?
The martial values of our society have deteriorated. During World War II, the press scarcely mentioned and never photographed the dozens (over 140 in all) of public hangings of American soldiers, and never mentioned the shootings of German civilians or captured prisoners. The press considered such stories to be out of bounds. In Iraq, the killings of civilians in Haditha, trumpeted as a massacre, received vastly more press attention than any valorous action in the war. The hue and cry was not motivated by a thirst for justice; when investigations exonerated most of the Marines involved at Haditha, the press wrote little and said less.
In World War II, our nation highlighted courage and quietly accepted mistakes. Today, we highlight mistakes and quietly accept valor. On Iwo Jima in 1945, almost six thousand Americans died, many more than in five years in Iraq. Iwo Jima was a strategic blunder. Today, the press and Congress would be apoplectic about such a blunder. Courage, Aristotle said, is the virtue that makes all other virtues possible. Geopolitical wisdom is admirable, but martial valor is essential to sustain a democracy. American society takes courage for granted, and the press ignores it. When we fight the next war, this attitude will poorly serve the nation. Will soldiers risk their lives, if society ignores courage?
In place of valor, the 400 prisoners at Guantanamo received remarkable pro-bono legal attention and lavish press coverage. "Elite political culture," CIA Director Michael Hayden said, "seems to be squeezing, at least psychically, that operational space; ... its (CIA) legitimacy is being questioned by certain segments of the population."
If the press and Congress extended to the prisoners in Iraq the same legal protections and front-page stories as is the case with Guantanamo, the military legal system would grind to a halt.
There were 400,000 prisoners of war imprisoned in the States during World War II. Had they not been wearing uniforms, their cases would still be pending in state and civilian courts. An enemy who wears a uniform while fighting Americans is foolish. By wearing civilian clothes, he can hide among the population and, if detained, demand an array of civil rights beyond the capacity of the United States judicial system to administer.
In five years of war, the president asked for no sacrifice by the American people. "I think a lot of people are in this fight," Bush said. "I mean, they sacrifice peace of mind when they see the terrible images of violence on TV every night." Terrible images weren't sacrifice; instead, they turned viewers against the war, making it easy for politicians to repudiate their earlier votes authorizing the invasion. Without sharing in any sacrifice, the voters had scant stake in the war.
Conversely, there was no evidence American society was —to sacrifice, whether the issue be Iraq, Afghanistan or anywhere else. As measured by casualties or costs in terms of the gross domestic product, Iraq was not a major war like Vietnam, let alone World War II. Society is disconnected from the military. Less than one in a hundred high school graduates serves in the infantry mentioned throughout this book. Three-quarters of high school graduates do not meet the military physical or mental entry standards, while Ivy League graduates no longer feel an obligation to serve a tour in the military before getting on with their careers.
Although sacrifice on a national scale is not required for every conflict, a healthy society does not treat war as an extension of domestic political competition. Secretary of Defense Gates took the post at the Pentagon intent on bringing Democrats and Republicans together on Iraq, where he said steady progress was being made. Far from promoting reconciliation in the States, progress in Iraq increased the bitterness at home.
"I say to our soldiers," Odierno told me, "you're finishing it so it wasn't in vain for those who came before." Despite Odierno's sentiment, some politicians did insist the sacrifices were in vain. Senator Harry Reid's comment in 2006 that the "war was lost" disgraced America. Another senator cited polls questioning the military's support for the war. Had a poll reported low morale on the beaches of Normandy in June of 1944, would the senate have voted to end the war?
National security cannot be sustained when domestic party affiliation and ideology determine the support for a war. Iraq was a symptom, not the cause of the ideological polarization of American society. The American public holds an unrealistic expectation that the next war will be fought with few fatalities and with extraordinary health care. And if the focus of the press is as intense in showing each casualty, maintaining support for the war will be difficult.
7. You conclude The Strongest Tribe by listing your ten counterinsurgency lessons / principles. Missing are principles that address what some call the essence of counterinsurgency. Why did you exclude rule of law and nation-building?
Morality does not change, but governments frequently change the rules of war. In Iraq, the Counterinsurgency Manual stated that a key goal was establishing the rule of law, to include: "a government that derives its powers from the governed, sustainable security institutions and fundamental human rights." That mission was beyond the skill set of soldiers and did not match the conditions on the ground. On the one hand, Iraq as a sovereign nation wracked by corruption did what it pleased. On the other hand, American soldiers had to act as arresting officers subject to strict rules of evidence, while Iraqi judges, US review boards and the Iraqi National Assembly flouted "the rule of law" and let prisoners go whenever it suited them.
Eight out of ten insurgents sent to prison were released within ten months. The high command claimed that only between one and nine percent of those sent to jail were ever re-arrested. That statistic alone was proof of terrible police work, given that the violent crime rate in Iraq - murder, kidnapping, robbery - was staggering. Insisting upon the liberal American rule of law resulted in a catch-&-release cycle that prolonged the war and angered the troops. Imprisoning insurgents for less than a year in the course of a multi-year insurgency did not make sense.
Nation-building should not be a primary military mission. It is too overwhelming. We don't know how to do it. If the essence of a rebuilding a nation is the imposition of our democratic processes and values, then State should have the lead -- and good luck. But that's not what we're doing. We have the worst of two worlds. We espouse democratic ideals, and let the host nation rule itself as a sovereign and sacrosanct entity, even though our soldiers are dying because that government has screwed up.
The Marine Corps Small Wars Manual, based on decades of combating insurgencies, stressed the selection of competent combat leaders in the host nation. That central lesson was not heeded in Iraq. When sovereignty was handed back in 2004, the coalition did not insist upon a role in promoting or firing Iraqi commanders. As a result, sectarian and incompetent Iraqi leaders prolonged the war. President Bush conflated sovereignty with sanctity, refusing to interfere in supposedly Iraqi affairs. But a nation incapable of defending against internal threats is not truly sovereign. As long as the coalition remained responsible for Iraq's security, it had a legitimate right to sanction incompetent or malign Iraqi security leaders. That did not happen on a large enough scale.
8. You've been to Afghanistan. What is your take on the calls for an Iraq-like surge there?
Let's take a deep breath and assess conditions, goals and then means. Let's select the proper forces for the proper missions, not armor for the mountains. The Marines have volunteered to take much of the mission, and that is the proper direction. But before we assign more forces, let's untangle the C3 mess, decide what we will and won't tolerate from other NATO countries, decide our red lines for dealing with the Afghan government (semi-sic), decide our role and determination re drugs and decide how we build an Afghan army.
Afghanistan is harder and longer than Iraq. Nation-building in Afghanistan will take decades. Let's not overpromise.
9. Many in the Small Wars Journal community of interest rate your book The Village as a classic on counterinsurgency in Vietnam. We've asked you this before and will keep pressing. Any chance of a film based on this account?
The producer Michael Shamberg and Harrison Ford have met with my son Owen (two Iraq tours) and me several times about a film centering on Fallujah based on my book No True Glory, with Ford in the role of General Jim Mattis. We wrote a script and went over it in detail with them. The studio is wary because the Iraq films to date have crashed (as they should have, because they were political diatribes, not drama). Generation Kill was a good depiction of the march to Baghdad, with the confusion, lack of sleep, determination and tragedies. Our Soldiers and Marines deserve an honest film about the insurgency that followed.
Concerning The Village, it -- like Iraq movies today -- ran into Hollywooditis. Hollywood is an insider's game with a massive bias toward portraying America and its leaders as evil or bumblers, or both. In The Village, one squad stuck it out, alone, among 5,000 Vietnamese. That does not fit the Hollywood image of Vietnam.
10. The Strongest Tribe is your third book on Iraq. What's next?
I'm looking at either exploring battlefield courage today -- both the individual soldier and the society that shapes him -- or Afghanistan, a war more complex than Iraq. It may go on, though, and on and on and on. A critical element of any book is persuading a publisher to take a chance on the public mood (willingness to buy a military book) two years from the time the contract is signed. My last book took a dozen trips to Iraq over three years (after No True Glory) and 1700 interviews. Writing is a commitment, like running a marathon that never ends. So it's best to make sure the publisher is on board first!