How Iraq, Afghanistan Have Changed The Military - NPR’s Talk of the Nation with guests John Nagl of the Center for a New American Security and Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post.
U.S. forces have left Iraq and a drawdown in Afghanistan is underway, but both wars have left an indelible impact on the U.S. military. The armed forces have altered strategy and tactics, and countless lives have been changed - including those of the families of service members serving multiple deployments...
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Comments
From John Nagl:<blockquote>"...And the military and the other agencies of the U.S. government, the relationship between Special Forces and the Central Intelligence Agency, for instance, has come together much more closely. So it's a very, very different military than it was a decade ago."</blockquote>Too early to tell. I'm personally rather dubious that much has or will change but I can give him the benefit of the doubt. However, to assert that change has taken place and to imply that it is embedded is probably fallacious.
From Greg Jaffe:<blockquote>"You know, there's a lot more vibrant debate among officers about the right way forward, about sort of different options, you know, counterinsurgency versus things like counterterrorism, which is more focused on hunting bad guys."</blockquote>That this comment came from one who is touted as one of the better military analysts / reporters is borderline scary...
I realize both remarks are quoted without context but I also believe the context changes the mildly inane aspects not one bit.
Penetrating analysis this was not. Gian is correct on this one.
One of Nagl's key logic flaws in my opinion is his dismisal of the impact of bad policy decisions coming from Washington, D.C.. To begin with the administration, the VP and SECDEF very vocally denied their was an insurgency, civil war, and a terrorist movement. They continued to call them a few whatever (dead enders?) that would be cleaned up in short order. The plan they had for a transitional government failed, which changed the role of the military. Furthermore, their appointed civlian Csar decided to disband the Iraqi Army (perhaps the greatest strategic flaw in our history) and then begun a de-bathification process which resulted in creating thousands of volunteers for what the VP called a non-existent insurgency. Once the impact of these policy decisions were realized, the military had to respond a crisis that was largely of our (U.S. civilian leadership) making. The decision was made to save Iraq, so subsequently the surge. This is where you and I may disagree, I think the surge was needed, it may not have been if we didn't disband the Iraqi Army, which was never the original plan. I recall clearly the plan for my unit was to work with the Iraqi Army based on the assumption they would side with us, so we assumed (incorrectly) we could go with less force than needed. The Iraqi Army (respected by the people, unlike the Iraqi police) would control certain towns and we would control others. Of course like many plans that one was turned upside down, but I still don't understand the logic of disbanding the Iraqi Army. What bright advisor came up with that idea? I think the surge worked because it enabled us to suppress the violence with greater violence. Bob W. is right when he says we didn't defeat any of the combatant organizations, we only suppressed them, and unfortunately Iraq seems to be taking a turn for the worse now. I would offer a word of caution to anyone who desires to claim we achieved our objectives there at this point. Give it at least a year to see what way it goes.
I agree that the military did a superb job at adapting once they realized they had to, and that was based on a policy to defeat what we were calling an insurgency (really a hybrid of insurgents, civil war, and AQI), which we didn't have in the early months. The advances in ISR, medical, transportation, C-IED, weaponized drones, etc. were nothing less than remarkable, yet putting those in context, they were technology enablers and TTPs, not strategy. When guys like Nagl claim we learned COIN I cringe, because it sounds like he is supporting the failed strategy and implying it will serve us well in the future. On that point, well as I said earlier, by stomach hurts :-).
Like Bill M, Nagl continues to give me aches as well.
When will Nagl come off of the Coin-learning-and-adapting nonsense? He wont let it go, it still commands everything he thinks and says. Sadly he has convinced himself that a bumbling, fumbling, conventionally minded army learned and adapted to better coin thanks to him, the coin conference at Leavenworth in 06, and General Petraeus. Yet the truth of the matter is that the reason the US Army was able to adapt from the start in Iraq was becuase, BECAUSE, it was a combined arms based army.
But beyond any of that discussion, the simple fact is that the army did learn and adapt in Iraq from the start, and after 8.8 years we have gained relatively nothing in terms of strategy and policy gains. Instead we have the same old batch of experts spouting off half-truth, boiler plate bromides about how much we have learned, bla bla bla.