... On the ground with the troops, it is clear that a major military change was in fact made in Iraq last year — not so much the addition of 30,000 troops, but the shift to a counterinsurgency strategy for using them. That strategy made the protection of Iraq's population a paramount goal in an effort to drive a wedge between the people and the militants and to encourage Iraqis to provide intelligence that the American military forces need to track down an elusive foe.

But counterinsurgency is inherently a long-term proposition, and that assumption has driven much of the military thinking about the future, even as it heightens the political debate at home.

"Unless you are suppressing insurgents the way the Romans did — creating a desert and calling it peace — it typically can take the better part of a decade or more," said Andrew Krepinevich, a military expert at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

"The paradox," he added, "is that counterinsurgency requires convincing the Iraqis of our staying power. At the same time, the American people view success in terms of how quickly we can pull out."

The American military plans to return by mid-July to 15 combat brigades, the total in Iraq before the troop buildup. No decisions have been made on further reductions, but American officers foresee a continued need for American combat forces and generally anticipate a more gradual shifting of responsibilities to Iraqi forces than many of the candidates — a reflection of caution they say is warranted by years of sobering experience.

"It is about mitigating risk and not repeating mistakes of the past," said one senior American officer in Iraq, referring to this cautious approach.

The politicians are suggesting they can produce faster results. But the candidates who have lambasted President Bush for failing to ask the tough questions about what might happen the day after Saddam Hussein was swept from power often don't fully address hard questions about what might happen the day after the American military gets out...

More:

Leavenworth Officers Updated on Iraq Security - Scott Cannon, Kansas City Star

Al Qaeda in Iraq's Shrinking Area of Operations - Bill Roggio, The Long War Journal

75% of Baghdad Areas Now Secure - Jim Michaels, USA Today

A Flip of the COIN - Steve Schippert, ThreatsWatch

The Debate Over Aghan Strategy - The Belmont Club

Gates on NATO Allies - Abu Muqawama

NATO in Afghanistan: Friendly Fire from SecDef Gates - Kings of War

More on COIN and the Europeans - Abu Muqawama

Donald Rumsfeld Gates? - Westhawk

The Afghanistan Strategy Debate Continues - Herschel Smith, The Captain's Journal

Gates: NATO Allies Doing What They Can - Lolita Baldor, Associated Press

Sticks 'n' Stones and Allies (Afghanistan) - New York Times editorial

Tough Questions on Afghanistan - The Record editorial (Ontario)

The Charge Made by Robert Gates - The Globe and Mail editorial

Afghanistan was Never Canada's War - Thomas Walkom, Toronto Star

Analyst Backs Gates' NATO Criticism - Leander Schaerlaeckens, Washington Times

Pakistani Home-grown Jihadists - Joseph Galloway, McClatchy Newspapers

More Troops to Afghanistan - Judith Latham, Voice of America

Gates' Criticism of Afghanistan Forces Riles NATO - Guy Raz, National Public Radio

Calling it the "birth of our air force," Afghan President Hamid Karzai opened a new $22 million U.S.-funded military hangar on Thursday to house a fleet that is expected to triple in the next three years.

Standing in the cavernous hangar opposite Kabul's international airport, Karzai thanked the U.S. for helping to buy six refurbished Mi-17 transport helicopters and six refurbished Mi-35 helicopter gunships from the Czech Republic, as well as four An-32 transport planes from Ukraine.

The newly acquired aircraft will help transport Afghan troops — who are taking on an increasing role in the battle against the Taliban — on missions around the country.

The new aircraft and upgraded flight facilities are part of a $183 million U.S.-funded program to bolster the Afghan air force...

Images via AP - (Scroll 1/2 page)

H/T Major Alberdeston

The counterinsurgency manual used by U.S. Soldiers and Marines undervalues the role airpower plays in fighting insurgencies, according to a monograph recently published by Air University officials.

That guidance, designated Field Manual 3-24 by the Army and Warfighting Publication 3-33.5 by the Marine Corps, has been widely celebrated since its publication in December 2006 for filling a gap in American military doctrine.

However, its relegation of airpower to a five-page appendix does not fully recognize the important part air, space and cyberspace operations can play in neutralizing insurgencies, according to Maj. Gen. Charles J. Dunlap, Jr., the Air Force's deputy judge advocate general.

In his monograph "Shortchanging the Joint Fight?", General Dunlap lauds the manual, co-authored by the Army and Marine Corps, for skillfully addressing many important counterinsurgency issues but fears it may be adopted as the de facto U.S. joint solution for combating insurgencies.

"By failing to reconcile the full potential of today's airpower capabilities and by focusing almost exclusively on the surface dimension, FM 3-24...falls short of offering U.S. decision makers a pragmatic, overall solution for the challenge of counterinsurgency," General Dunlap writes.

Efforts are underway to write a joint counterinsurgency doctrine in which all services will have input, and General Dunlap hopes the U.S. Air Force's "airminded perspective" is captured in the final product...

High-Profile Officer Nagl to Leave Army, Join Think Tank - Tom Ricks, Washington Post

"One of the Army's most prominent younger officers, whose writings have influenced the conduct of the U.S. troop buildup in Iraq, said he has decided to leave the service to study strategic issues full time at a new Washington think tank."

"Lt. Col. John Nagl, 41, is a co-author of the Army's new manual on counterinsurgency operations, which has been used heavily by U.S. forces carrying out the strategy of moving off big bases, living among the population and making the protection of civilians their top priority."

"A Rhodes Scholar, Nagl first achieved prominence for his Oxford University doctoral dissertation, which was published in 2002 as a book titled "Learning to Eat Soup With a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons From Malaya and Vietnam." The introduction to a recent edition of the book was written by Gen. Peter Schoomaker, at the time the Army's chief of staff..."

LTC Nagl will be joining the staff at the Center for a New American Security.

More:

Abu Muqawama

Abu Muqawama here, weighing in on this issue between sessions of a conference he's attending. On the one hand, it's easy to see Nagl's retirement as yet another scrap of evidence pointing toward both an Army going down the drain and the best and brightest packing up and leaving the service. On the other hand, though, a guy like John Nagl -- friend and mentor to both of your humble bloggers -- has been swamped with great opportunities outside the Army for some time now. He's more of a rock star in DC policy circles -- and among Daily Show viewers -- than he is in the active duty military. So is it a loss for the Army? Yes. T.X. (Hammes) is correct. But might John Nagl better serve the country in a position outside the military? Abu Muqawama certainly thinks so. So this isn't a "bad news" story. The U.S. Army could have better used and supported John Nagl, sure, but if he winds up as an Assistant Secretary of Defense in a few years, he'll be in a better position to affect policy and "fight" the good fight there than he would on some J staff in the Pentagon. Now if we can only rope Nagl into a guest spot on abumuqawama.com...

Intel Dump

The Army is poorer for his loss. Nagl is one of this country's leading soldier-scholars. He was a likely candidate for general's stars and high command, because he had a rare combination of brilliant intellect and operational excellence as a commander. He was also one of the Army's best public intellectuals...

However, I have every confidence that Lt. Col. Nagl will continue to serve in his new role, and continue his push for change from the outside. As he told the Post: "It's not the strain of repeated deployments," he said, but "a belief that I can contribute perhaps on a different level — and my family wants me to leave." I respect him for listening to his family, and look forward to the contribution that Mister Nagl can make in his next career.

Kings of War

The Army's loss. But insofar as the Centre for New American Security is a think-tank with the purpose of aligning talent with major policy positions should we have a Democratic presidency perhaps the nation's gain. Nagl's a huge figure in the COIN field. No doubt the blogosphere will be abuzz about his contributions past and future. Here's one that maybe you'll not hear elsewhere. Nagl's Law (as conveyed to me somewhat drunkenly in the bar of Cumberland Lodge outside Windsor): when you are drinking with friends and are speaking positively of one who is absent pick up your phone, call and say 'hey we're having a great time wish you were here.' There you go. John Nagl, COIN guru (which you knew); and really great guy (which maybe you didn't). Good luck John!

Time Magazine's Swampland

... This continues a trend--the best and brightest, especially those associated with formulating the Army's Counterinsurgency Field Manual--are either being passed over for promotion (as Colonel H.R. McMaster was) or simply leaving for a variety of reasons that almost always add up to frustration with a bureacracy still controlled by the unsuccessful and the unimaginative...

Slate

The early retirement of a lieutenant colonel ordinarily wouldn't merit the slightest mention. But today's news that Lt. Col. John Nagl is leaving the Army is a big deal.

It's another sign, more alarming than most, that the U.S. military is losing its allure for a growing number of its most creative young officers. More than that, it's a sign that one of the Army's most farsighted reforms—a program that some senior officials regard as essential—may be on the verge of getting whacked...

The Atlantic

... Petraeus, as is obvious, has been greeted as a savior by politicians of both parties. The striking thing that Nagl's resignation illustrates is that younger officers in the Petraeus model and, like Nagl, around Petraeus himself are faring nowhere near as well. The other most famous case, too resonant and complicated to do more than mention at the moment, involves Col. H.R. McMaster: author of Dereliction of Duty, a book that has had tremendous influence within the military. (More on McMaster here.) He has been a successful combat leader in Iraq but, as every serving officer knows, he has twice been "passed over" for promotion to general. Unfortunately there are a lot of other examples, involving not just Petraeus's own coterie but promising-yet-stifled officers more generally...

NPR Interview

Daily Show Interview

LTC John Nagl SWJ Homepage

In an unusual public criticism, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said he believes NATO forces currently deployed in southern Afghanistan do not know how to combat a guerrilla insurgency, a deficiency that could be contributing to the rising violence in the fight against the Taliban.

"I'm worried we're deploying [military advisors] that are not properly trained and I'm worried we have some military forces that don't know how to do counterinsurgency operations," Gates said in an interview.

Gates' criticism comes as the Bush administration has decided to send 3,200 U.S. Marines to southern Afghanistan on a temporary mission to help quell the rising number of attacks. It also comes amid growing friction among allied commanders over the Afghan security situation...

From the Foreword:

As a young Army officer, focusing on the likelihood of being deployed to Vietnam, Bernard Fall's Street Without Joy was probably the first military text that possessed real professional meaning for me. In this timely Occasional Paper, Dr Michael Evans, formerly Head of the Australian Army's Land Warfare Studies Centre and now the Australian Defence College Fellow, gives us an insightful and comprehensive review of urban military operations. He has traced the subject's origins and development to give us an up-to-date operational-strategic analysis of the significance of urban operations into the 21st century. In particular, Dr Evans makes a piercing historical link with Fall's work on rural insurgency in South-East Asia by calling his study City Without Joy—a play on Fall's title that captures the complexity and challenges of contemporary military operations in cities.

Dr Evans informs us that, while in the past it was often possible for commanders to bypass pitched combat in cities, that era has now passed. For a variety of demographic and operational reasons, the role of cities in 21st century war has begun to change. I was strongly reminded of this changing reality when in 2004, I assumed the position of Deputy Chief of Operations in the Headquarters, Multi-National Force - Iraq (MNF-I). Faced by the second year of the Iraqi insurgency, we in MNF-I, developed a pro-active 'cities strategy' initiative designed to counter the spread of urban-based insurgency. At times, some 15 major Iraqi cities were designated as part of our city strategy. Yet, we soon discovered the uncomfortable truth that enemy forces are not constrained by their adversary's strategic planning. Insurgents attacked Coalition forces in cities that were not on our list. And, of course, the most violent urban battle of all occurred in Fallujah—a city in the Sunni Triangle—that was not even part of the Coalition's original city strategy.

What this Occasional Paper demonstrates convincingly is that at the tactical level of warfighting there is not much that is new in fighting in cities, but that it remains absolutely necessary for us to continue re-learning old lessons. Again, with respect to learning lessons in war, Iraq is instructive. Prior to the second battle of Fallujah, Coalition planners were given very wise advice on how to fight in cities by US Vietnam veterans who had fought in Hue in 1968 during the Tet Offensive. Indeed, one Fallujah 'after action report' stated that the ebb and flow of the fighting in the city had been almost exactly as the Hue veterans had earlier described.

In my view, fighting in cities has two dimensions. The first dimension is that of generalship and the need to provide an operational-strategic shaping of urban combat. The role of a general is to shape a city fight in a manner that gives soldiers as good a chance as possible of achieving stated objectives. This is demanding in an urban environment because, as Dr Evans points out, command often becomes fragmented, so driving control from the operational to the tactical level. Nonetheless, in Fallujah, we shaped the urban military operational environment for three months by every legal means possible as the city emptied of civilians. By the start of the November 2004 assault, we had produced a shaped battlefield for troops in which the rules of engagement came as close as possible to matching the reality of tactical combat on the ground. To have failed to undertake this operational-strategic preparation and to have sent soldiers into a civilian-populated Fallujah under conditions of all-seeing media scrutiny would have been, in my view, irresponsible generalship. The second battle of Fallujah was successful because of months of shaping, a willingness to learn from experience, and the application of sufficient human and logistical resources.

The second dimension in urban operations is that of skilful soldiering. We ask much of modern soldiers when we expect them to conduct 'three block war' phased-style operations involving peace support, humanitarian and warfighting activities. In the second battle of Fallujah, Headquarters MNF-I pulled US Marines and some US Army armoured forces out of three-block operations and, with very little transition time, threw them into the cauldron of a conventional, urban, multi-battalion, multinational divisional assault—an assault complete with joint fires, joint intelligence and joint logistics. The speed and complexity of this kind of joint battle are what modern military operations in cities now mean for uniformed personnel. The modern warfighter is more and more likely to be pitchforked from restrained counter insurgency operations in a three-block-style environment into full conventional assault operations. In these circumstances, a major challenge is to retain our moral and legal focus when 'the killing switch' is flicked and our soldiers are forced to fight in grueling close combat.

As this fine Occasional Paper demonstrates, fighting in cities is a tough proposition, but it is not an impossible task for modern armed forces. What is required above all else is preparation and forethought. Dr Evans' comprehensive study represents a valuable and important analysis of an area of the military art that is likely to exercise our minds increasingly in coming years. This is a publication that deserves a wide readership and I commend it to fellow military professionals.

Jim Molan, AO, DSC

Major General

Adviser to the Vice Chief of the Defence Force

Warfighting and Lessons Learned

6 October 2007

City without Joy