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Dear SWJ Blog,

David Kilcullen of General David Petraeus' staff in Baghdad makes a fine start but has much farther to go in attacking the pseudo-religious scam of al Qaeda-style Terrorism (AQST) in Islamic religious terms.

To date, the State Department, the White House and the Defense Department -- and even the otherwise excellent new COIN Manual itself -- have studiously avoided this approach in favor of Western secular words only. This is because of an understandable but, I think, inordinate fear of making mistakes (as indeed we would from time to time) if we were to begin combating AQST in religious terms and frames of reference.

Such favored Western secular and law enforcement terms as criminals, thugs, bring to justice, killers and even terrorists are quite true but are little better than shooting with blanks when it comes to their impact on hearts, minds and souls (don't forget the "and souls" element) in the Muslim and Arab worlds where --

First, the ever deceitful enemy is incessantly talking in terms of "Jihad" (Holy War) by "mujahideen" and "shahideen" (martyrs) destined for "Jennah" (Paradise) as a proper reward for killing all of us "kuffar" -- us alleged "infidels" and "unbelievers" -- and where

Second, all too many of us tend to confirm the validity of such pro-al Qaeda terms -- and thus to polish Osams bin Laden's and Ayman al-Zawahiri's haloes -- either by repeating these words of self-sanctification or by failing to contest their validity, or both.

Enter now David Kilcullen, who calmly breaks stride by correctly, prudently and one-word-at-a-time referring to these suicide mass murderers as ungodly "munafiquun (hypocrites) who pose as defenders of the faith while simultaneously perverting it." Great!

He then recounts that in the bloody battle for Ramadi "The gangsters called themselves 'mujahideen'' but there was nothing holy about their war." Great, again!

In both cases he challenges the patently false religious claims of the terrorists and implies that they are enemies of Quranic Islam who are using "religion as cynical cover for carnage," a reference which sounds very much like "apostasy" (murtadd) to this reader. Great, for a third time!

In all three of these assertions the man is leveling serious religious charges, not against Islam itself but against a pseudo-Islamic ideology which is in fact the antithesis of the "peaceful, compassionate, merciful, beneficent and just" Allah who is repeatedly so described by the Quran. But to complete the job, both he and those who would follow his example need several additional semantic tools by which to portray these evildoers and their so-called "religious insurgency"

(a) NOT as constituting so-called "Jihad" (Holy War) but ungodly "Hirabah" (unholy war, war against society) and forbidden "Irhab" (Terrorism), instead;

(b) NOT as the "jihadis" and the "mujahideen" they falsely claim to be but as the irhabis (terrorists) and the mufsiduun (evildoers, mortal sinners and corrupters) they really are;

(c) NOT as the Godly heroes of "Jihadi Martyrdom" they falsely claim to be but as the Satanic perpetrators of "Irhabi Murderdom" (Genocidal Terrorism) they really are;

(d) NOT as destined for a virgin-filled Paradise for killing all of us so-called kuffar (infidels) but to a demon-filled Jahannam (Eternal Hellfire) for killing so many thousands of innocents, fellow Muslims, "People of the Book" and "Sons of Abraham," instead;

(e) NOT as the abd'al-Allah (Servants of Allah) they falsely claim to be but as the abd'al-Shaitan (Servants of Satan), the murtadduun (apostates) and the khawarij (outside-the-religion deviants) they really are.

Only once we know such correctly condemnatory words and begin to use them -- prudently but insistently, as well -- might we then begin to undermine the so-called "Jihadi Martyrdom" imagery by which these ruthless killers live, die and expect to enter Paradise as a reward for defeating "The Great Satan." (Realize, please, that according to today's AQ-concocted and universally parroted lexicon, that is who we are. For who other than TGS himself would go about killing "holy guys" and "martyrs" on their way to Paradise?)

While such truth-in-language will not persuade all or even most of today's terrorists of the apostate and satanic nature of their ways, it will in time greatly erode the certainty of their "jihadi" resolve. Those who posit that such killers are "impervious to counter methods" of a religious nature and are "not susceptible to having their hearts and minds won over" may be right. But how will we ever know if we never even try?

In addition to whatever impact such an initiative has on the Hell-bound Terrorists themselves, it will help to strengthen the anti-murderdom resolve of most truly faithful Muslims -- many of whom, like so many of us, are quite thoroughly hoodwinked by AQST's false labeling, by habit of language, by brainwashing, by pseudo-Islamic preachings and by a wide variety of peer pressures into a 'round-the-clock parroting of al Qaeda's seductive but patently false language of self-sanctification.

By painting the truthful alternative image of Irhabi Murderdom (of Genocidal Terrorism), we will begin to expose al Qaeda's grandiose promises as a monumental satanic scam which entices religiously motivated young Muslims into becoming irhabis, mufsiduun, munafiquun, murtadduun and khawarij -- and dispatches them in due course not into Allah's Paradise but into Shaitan's demon-filled Hellfire, instead.

And in that truthful RELIGIOUS frame of reference we might begin to find the much-needed disincentive to the suicide mass murder by which al Qaeda, al Sadr, Hizballah, the Afghan Taliban and their genocidal ilk are now attempting to inflict a "death by a thousand cuts" catastrophe on the entire civilized world.

Of course, those true believers in the al Qaeda Apostasy -- as well as those individuals who are simply criminals, psychopaths, mercenaries, thugs and Caliphate-hungry imperialists -- and will still have to be hunted down and either be killed or be captured and imprisoned.

But is it not also time, as David Kilcullen (and maybe Gen. Petraeus himself?) seems to be recommending, that we at least "GIVE A BLOODY GOOD TRY," as the British and as Kilcullen's own Australians would say, to these long-avoided strategies, operations and tactics for saving not only ourselves but Islam itself from those deviants who would turn that huge and growing religion into nothing but a perpetual killing machine of all Christians, of all Jews and of all Muslims, as well, who happen to disagree?

Finally, as a means of assessing the anti-Terrorism utility of the "war of words" and "war for hearts, minds and souls" recommendations explained above, one might try to picture what the late Osama bin Laden's reaction to each might have been before he was so deservedly cast into Eternal Hellfire some time ago.

(And how is that for a somewhat speculative but quite possibly true "psyop" ending to this story about AQST's satanic mastermind?)

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Jim Guirard -- TrueSpeak Institute 703-768-0957 Justcauses@aol.com ... and Truespeak.org

A DC-area attorney, writer, lecturer and anti-Terrorism strategist, Jim Guirard was longtime Chief of Staff to former US Senators Allen Ellender and Russell Long. His TrueSpeak Institute and TrueSpeak.org website are devoted to truth-in-language and truth-in-history in public discourse.

The problem is that the insurgency in Iraq and elsewhere is fueled, if not based on an Islamic jihad. The element most intransigent and so far impervious to counter methods is the suicide bomber who believes that he goes to heaven for killing men, women and children in the name and the cause of an extreme religiosity.

The counterinsurgency (COIN) manual was based on selective abstracts from past insurgencies that were at base political movements, where the allegiance of the people could be swayed by one side or the other. In Iraq, no Sunni is going to convert and become a Shiite, or vice versa. Granted, the Baathists behind the curtain believe they can manipulate the jihad extremists, but AQI has displaced them as the field leaders. And AQI does intend a caliphate based on its interpretation of religion.

The COIN manual was based on a different model, one that does not apply to the root cause of the insurgency - a radical religion whose adherents are not susceptible to having their hearts or minds won over.

Many of the TTPs in the COIN manual do apply. But no country has written the manual for eradicating the virulent disease of Islamic jihad based on a twisted interpretation of religion, God and the kingdom of heaven.

The theorists posit the existence of something called "religious insurgencies", which are allegedly defined by their religious (read: Islamic) dimension. They argue that the passion religion arouses, its stringent dogma, and its capacity to de-humanize the "other" makes religious insurgents uniquely violent and fanatical. This allegedly immunizes such insurgencies against efforts to address legitimate grievances, "hearts and minds", governance improvement, resource and population control, and minimum force — key techniques in the new doctrine. This, they argue, foredooms counterinsurgency to fail in current conflicts. For the serious version of this argument, read Frank Hoffman's analysis here at SWJ; for the populist variant, read anything recent by Ralph Peters or Edward Luttwak. Most critics (not all—the sublime Hoffman is an exception) argue that counterinsurgency is too "soft" for religious insurgents, that unbridled brutality — "out-terrorizing the terrorists" (Luttwak), "the value of ferocity" (Peters) is more appropriate.

Consider this elegant insight from David Morris in The Big Suck: "Ramadi is the Chernobyl of the insurgency, a place where the basic proteins of guerilla warfare have been irradiated by technology and radical Islam, producing seemingly endless cells of wide-eyed gunslingers, bomb gurus, and aspiring martyrs. Globalization wrought with guns and God. A place devoid of mercy, a place where any talk of winning hearts and minds would be met with a laugh, both sides seeming to have decided, This is where the killing will never stop, so give it your best shot." This, incidentally, is a far more nuanced view than that of the "Islam=Bad" polemicists, and comes from an extremely perceptive piece based on participant field observation, which is well worth repeated reading.

But there are three problems with this argument. First, there is solid field evidence that modern counterinsurgency methods, properly updated for the new environment, actually are effective against current insurgencies. Second, insurgents in both Afghanistan and Iraq are not actually particularly religious — certainly, they are no more religious than the societies they are attacking. Indeed, there is an empirical problem with the whole notion of a "religious" insurgency, since almost all historical insurgencies have included a strong religious dimension, so that it is not clear that discrete "religious insurgencies" actually exist as observable phenomena. And third, doctrinal publications are not templates, but generic expositions of principle; not cookbooks, but frameworks. Practitioners must populate these frameworks with current, locally accurate, deeply understood insights into the societies where they operate. There is simply no substitute for what we might call "conflict ethnography": a deep, situation-specific understanding of the human, social and cultural dimensions of a conflict, understood not by analogy with some other conflict, but in its own terms.

Take Ramadi. Eleven months ago, it was the blackest rat-hole in the dark insurgent sewer of the upper Euphrates valley. The war in Ramadi, as David Morris rightly notes, was fuelled by insurgent cells with a mastery of consumer electronics, grass-roots propaganda and a blood-lust driven by tribal identity, youthful lack of empathy and sense of invulnerability (a sense of invulnerability that turned out to be laughably unfounded, I'm delighted to say). The gangsters called themselves "mujahidin" but there was nothing holy about their war: it was Lord of the Flies with cell-phones, car bombs, video cameras, sniper head-shots, torture with electric drills and execution by chainsaw. Children tricked into becoming human bombs, religion as cynical cover for carnage.

Today, the town is transformed. Attacks are down from 100 a day to less than four. Tribal and community leaders have allied themselves with the government. Imams are preaching against the insurgents. Police recruits are up from 200 a few months ago, to around five thousand today. There is improved security, with children walking to school, markets and shops re-opening, citizens back on the streets. This week, throughout Anbar, a whole day went by without a single attack anywhere — this in a province that senior intelligence officers regarded as "lost" less than six months ago. Of course, there are still severe threats: al Qa'ida killed innocent civilians in a suicide bombing just last week. But overall, the picture is vastly better than last year. How did this happen? Not through brutality and terror, but by the consistent application of proven counterinsurgency techniques. Local units, partnering with the population, conducted careful, minimum-force sweeps of the town, painstakingly cleared out insurgent cells, established a permanent presence with U.S. and Iraqi police and military units permanently protecting the population, alienated and eliminated terrorist cells, dealt effectively with legitimate grievances, and applied minimum but effective force. Officers who understood the cultural and social make-up of the population crafted effective local alliances. Proven counterinsurgency techniques were applied against the mythically implacable "religious" insurgents. Result: success. And Ramadi is but one of many examples.

As I say, these were not really "religious" insurgents at all. In Afghanistan and Iraq the enemy invokes religious principle as a tool for manipulating the population. In both conflicts, to listen to the insurgents' propaganda, you would think they were God-fearing mujahidin engaged in a righteous struggle against unbelieving occupiers, the ihtilal of the salidi. In each case the insurgents set themselves up as a model of religious rectitude, but the facts contradict their claims. The Taliban are world leaders in opium production, whereas more than 70% of Afghans believe the production of narcotics is un-Islamic. Last year, Taliban leaders told their field commanders to constrain their more egregious instances of pedophilia, because their tendency to take and sodomize young boys was losing them popular support. Very moral of them. I have seen former Iraqi insurgents break down in bitter tears when they realized that guerrilla leaders they believed were true Muslims were actually tattooed habitual criminals with links to organized crime, murder-for-profit gangs and the old Ba'athist oligarchy. Righteous ghazis these are not.

Indeed, the whole notion of religious insurgency is somewhat problematic. In any conflict where there is a religious difference between the two sides, religion is likely to become an identity marker and political rallying-point. We observed this with Catholics in East Timor, Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland, Mau-Mau in Kenya, firqat in Dhofar, Greek and Turkish Cypriots, and in Thailand where Islam became a surrogate marker for Malay ethnicity. Historically, most insurgencies involved at least some religious dimension. Even Communist insurgencies of the classical period invoked Marxist concepts in pseudo-religious fashion.

And in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and the Horn of Africa — the critics' favorite examples of "religious insurgency" — all the major players are Muslims. Islam is invoked by all sides as a rallying cry, not solely by the insurgents. And in fact the conflict is entirely political: it concerns power in human social structures, not theological disputation. As I wrote in response to Edward Luttwak a few weeks ago, "Dr Luttwak argues that 'the vast majority of Afghans and Iraqis, assiduous mosque-goers, illiterates or at best semi-illiterate, naturally believe their religious leaders' (who, Dr Luttwak suggests, incite violence with claims that America seeks to destroy Islam and control oil resources). Again, this is at variance with field observation. In fact, neither Iraqis nor Afghans are particularly assiduous mosque-goers. And religious figures are prominent on all sides of both conflicts, in moderate and extreme political groups; there is an extremely wide range of clerical opinion, ranging from quietism through support for democratic government, to extremism. More fundamentally, in these societies, religious faith is not a function of ignorance and credulity, as Dr Luttwak implies, but a widespread cultural norm that infuses all social classes, political orientations and education levels." The true identity difference in Afghanistan is ethnic — the Taliban are 100% Pakhtun — while in Iraq key identity drivers are tribal, economic and ethnic.

But I said there was a grain of truth in the criticism, and it is this: because insurgents like the Taliban or AQ subjectively believe they are fighting to uphold God's will, their strategic calculus and tactical thought-patterns differ significantly from those of more pragmatic, materialist groups that fight for "real-world" objectives. This doesn't make them any more religious than the societies against which they fight, but it does mean we have to take this strategic approach into account when designing approaches to defeat them. Also, when Western nations become involved in large-scale counterinsurgency operations in Muslim countries, religion becomes a unifying factor for factions who regard our intrusion as sacrilegious. This is an extremely strong argument for thinking twice before entering such conflicts, by the way. It is also an argument for working by, with or through local allies whenever possible, ruthlessly minimizing our involvement. But this is recognized in the new doctrine, and features in our approach to Iraq and Afghanistan. In both countries, we operate at the request of legitimate, Islamic, democratically-elected governments that have asked for help. As soon as that help is no longer needed, we will leave. There is zero religious justification for any call to war against infidel invaders. Those who invoke religion in these conflicts are, quite simply, hypocrites. And Western armchair theorists who concede the enemy's religious arguments are either unfamiliar with reality on the ground, or deceived by enemy propaganda.

The bottom line is that no handbook relieves a professional counterinsurgent from the personal obligation to study, internalize and interpret the physical, human, informational and ideological setting in which the conflict takes place. Conflict ethnography is key; to borrow a literary term, there is no substitute for a "close reading" of the environment. But it is a reading that resides in no book, but around you; in the terrain, the people, their social and cultural institutions, the way they act and think. You have to be a participant observer. And the key is to see beyond the surface differences between our societies and these environments (of which religious orientation is one key element) to the deeper social and cultural drivers of conflict, drivers that locals would understand on their own terms.

The notion of "religious insurgency", in short, is poorly supported by the evidence. And the related idea that out-terrorizing insurgents is the only way to win current conflicts is dangerous nonsense. The facts on the ground show that proven, humane counterinsurgency methods do work, and that these methods — constantly updated and adapted as the enemy and the environment evolve — are the most effective approach.

David Kilcullen is Senior Counter-Insurgency Advisor to the Commanding General, Multi-National Force—Iraq. These are his personal views only.

Westhawk: Bing West and a 'Bottom-up' Approach

Mr. West seems very pessimistic about the upper reaches of the Iraqi government. The politicians and officers at the top are corrupt, incompetent, or disloyal to the whole country. This does not leave much hope at this point that Iraqi society can come together in a unified effort against the country's violence.

In his point #4, Mr. West mentions that the Americans are already preparing for what will happen after the "surge" strategy ends (in either success or failure). According to Mr. West, this summer the Americans will select advisor team leaders for assignments to Iraqi units, with duty presumably beginning in the autumn.

As we have mentioned in previous posts this week, this September the American political situation will likely force a change in the U.S. military strategy in Iraq.

The Belmont Club: Ear to the Ground

Bottom line: Iraqis on the ground are increasingly doing well but Iraqis at the top are screwing up. One reason why diplomatic solutions sometimes fail is that higher levels of abstraction are achieved at the price of losing information in detail. This problem is solved in data-mining situations by allowing the user to "drill down" and rediscover the detail. But that presumes you have a drill. This loss of information is especially acute in countries where national systems do not have an adequate correspondence with actors on the ground. Whatever the shortcomings of the US involvement in Iraq might be, especially under the strategy where troops are fielded in community-based joint security stations or patrol bases, is that it has resulted in a "bit bang" or information explosion which mutually influences operations on the ground on both the Iraqi and American sides.

ShrinkWrapped: Optimism and Pessimism

The second reason for optimism is that even if the surge fails in its political objective, ie establishing conditions whereby the Iraqi government makes the difficult political decisions necessary to end the sectarian estrangement, thereby ending the support for the insurgency, both Democratic realists and Republican strategists have a nidus of a plan which any future administration can use as an ongoing foundation for the war against Islamic fascism.

The Fourth Rail: Bing West's Iraq Report

Bing West's observations on the state of the Iraqi Army and police, both challenges and setbacks, largely mirror my own. He also makes several recommendations for moving forward, but only considers Baghdad and Anbar province as the major centers of gravity in Iraq. Here is where I disagree. While Baghdad and Anbar province are vital to success, securing both the Baghdad "belts" and Diyala are integral to the security effort, and the absence of these two theaters in his report is a glaring omission.

PrairiePundit: Iraqi Trip Report Congress Should Read

West provides on the ground experience and details that will not be found in mainstream media stories. I highly recommend reading this in full if you are interested in what is happening in the war and what it is going to take to win. Those who want to lose should avoid reading this because you may be disappointed.

Underlying the secretary-general's request is the stark fact that the distinctions between crime and war are blurring. Insurgents, genocidiares, and their terrorist cousins challenge the state monopoly on violence. Increasingly, they do so in conjunction with criminal enterprises: gangs and organized crime. Recognizing this, the U.N. is seeking international police to participate in its 16 peacekeeping missions around the world.

Yet, much more is needed than individual police officers. The current global situation calls for new security capabilities. Peacekeeping, peacebuilding, and related activities are important elements of global security. Typically military forces are deployed to address conflict and quell hostilities. Often they are augmented by civilian police (CIVPOL) to foster order and the transition to stability. But in today's world, strategic crime can challenge a state's solvency. Lawlessness and disorder in a single failed state can spark a regional conflagration. More robust and agile capabilities are required.

Military forces have much to offer, but are rarely configured to sustain long-term policing and crime control capabilities. Conventional militaries are designed to fight other militaries not police the streets of a community or investigate complex criminal conspiracies. Policing involves a complex set of social control skills and community interaction. Community policing activities help identify threats and criminal enterprises, but more importantly they help sustain public order and secure communities—a prerequisite to functional states.

Both military and police capabilities are required to address complex hostile situations at acute phases of the conflict spectrum. Yet, the nature and range of skills required for effective social control during armed insurrection and active hostility is more than a typical uniformed police officer on patrol can address. Some nations have a third force option between the police and military to fill this gap. These formed police forces or stability police units such as France's Gendermerie, Italy's Carabinieri, or Spain's Guardia Civil. These forces traditionally performed internal security functions, but increasingly are deployed abroad to support peace operations.

Indeed the need for such expeditionary police (EXPOL) capability led the European Union to establish a multinational police peacekeeping force that can draw on up to 5,000 specially trained police for civilian peace operations. Similarly, Canada's Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Australian police services are regular contributors to international peacekeeping. The RCMP, for example, operates an International Peace Operations Branch responsible for managing and deploying provincial, municipal, and regional officers along with their own constables worldwide.

These formed units are ideal for high intensity policing tasks such as crowd control and riot suppression, advising local police, and a range of tactical operations, such as serving warrants or dignitary protection. They have also been able to provide significant support to war crimes investigations, and investigations into criminal support to insurgent activities demonstrating the need for standing constabulary capabilities.

Constabulary operations, such as these, are the "missing mission" in the United States security structure. The U.S. has no national police service (the FBI is a non-uniformed investigative agency) and state and local police address these functions internally. Few if any local U.S. Forces could field or contribute to an on-going expeditionary capability without straining their ability to perform their home mission. The U.S. also has no standing constabulary or EXPOL force and relies upon scarce or ill-fitted military units (and ad hoc civilian police units) to fill expeditionary needs. The same is true for NATO and the U.N.

The time has come to develop standing constabulary forces at several levels: U.S., NATO, and U.N. Such a building block approach would allow national and regional operations, as well as global U.N. efforts. A serious evaluation of U.S. policy and force structure is required. Many questions need to be answered: how would this service be structured; where would it reside (in the Department of Defense, Justice, State or Homeland Security); would it operate solely as an expeditionary force or domestically as well? Further questions related to the training and scope of operations must also be addressed. Would the service cover terrorism, and counter-insurgency in addition to peace operations? Finally, would it be a standing force like the Gendarmerie or a composite force like the Australian, Canadian, and EU forces?

Policing and crime control skills must be integrated into strategic and operational responses to peace operations and related conflicts that challenge transnational stability. A global framework of standing or composite constabulary forces could fill this need. It is time to fill the missing mission—the time for expeditionary police is now.

John P. Sullivan is a senior research fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies on Terrorism, a member of the board of advisors for the Terrorism Research Center, Inc., and serves as a lieutenant with the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department . He is also co-editor of Countering Terrorism and WMD: Creating a global counter-terrorism network (Routledge 2006).

Infantry squad leaders -- often, corporals -- know (or should) that the behavior of their Marines sends signals to those always watching them in an insurgency: the people and the insurgents. When the Marines are comfortable with their weapons; seemingly unafraid to interact with the locals; understanding of native customs and mores; and treat the populace with dignity and respect, then the sum of all of these attitudes conveys a certain perception to both the people and terrorists who watch them: it hastens cooperation from the populace and hard-targets them from insurgent attacks. This is the basic informational component of a strategic corporal in Iraq.

Consider now a strategic cameraman. Numerous attacks in Iraq and elsewhere are filmed for propaganda purposes. The classic case is that of the IED or VBIED. Numerous IED videos circulate throughout cyberspace for recruiting or fundraising purposes.

From an informational standpoint, the area immediately affected by a corporal with a squad of Marines is local and physically located. The area immediately affected by a cameraman posting attack videos online is global and virtual.

If our enemies can manage to squeeze virtual and global effects out of tactical and local actions, why can't we?

The Origins of The Strategic Corporal

In 1999, Commandant of the Marine Corps General Charles Krulak coined the term "strategic corporal" to reflect the devolution of greater responsibility onto the small-unit levels of military leadership.

In many cases, the individual Marine will be the most conspicuous symbol of American foreign policy and will potentially influence not only the immediate tactical situation, but the operational and strategic levels as well. His actions, therefore, will directly impact the outcome of the larger operation; and he will become, as the title of this article suggests -- the Strategic Corporal.

When first conceived, it conjured notions of NCOs capable of doing far more than their predecessors had been -- allowing them to influence conflicts at the operational and even strategic level. This is certainly the case today with the training of an infantry squad leader. Some even go so far to argue that the corporals of today have the same skill sets as captains of 1980.

But what of the term "strategic corporal" itself? As an institution, it seems the Marine Corps today only invokes this term when admonishing leaders to watch out for the press. For example, if your Marine screws up and CNN is present, then he'll become a strategic corporal. The soldiers at Abu Ghraib became inadvertent strategic corporals. Pay attention the next time someone uses this term and note two things: the context usually involves the media; and the connotation is almost always negative.

This is not the way it's supposed to be. Taken in this way, the strategic corporal becomes a condition meant to be avoided. Who wants their Marines screwing up on national TV? Moreover, it reduces the concept to something akin to "being on one's best behavior all the time." This is certainly a good way to think of one's conduct, but it results in ceding the virtual informational battlespace to any enemy who is not afraid of media. In fact, the strategic corporal can mean a whole lot more for US operations -- specifically with regard to the media -- and can even help us win conflicts.

Information Operations at the Lowest Levels

Two trends vex information operations. The first is the globalization of electronic media.

The military has traditionally divided perception management into two areas and skillsets: public affairs and psychological operations. In brief, public affairs is usually handled like the old-fashioned PR machines of large companies, featuring photo-ops, interviews, press releases and the like. The target audience is generally the US public and public affairs is usually imbued with the notion of telling things as they are, or getting stories out. Psychological operations are targeted toward an enemy, or a given neutral populace, and are meant to make them think a certain way. These two communities have traditionally been taught to never associate with one another due to the differing needs governing their roles. The problem lies at the intersection of the warfighter's need for deception and the public's need for transparency.

Today though, the globalization of all forms of media means that it is more and more difficult to segregate media products for a given audience. With regard to Iraq, this means that any given story, video, interview, or announcement that is accessible via the internet can potentially have four audiences, all of whom will have a tendency to view it differently:

a) Iraqis

b) Muslims elsewhere

c) Americans

d) the rest of the world.

There is much further segmentation within these groups as well. The point is that electronic media can no longer be carefully segregated as to who will view, read, or listen to it. This may still be possible for types of information that is not digitized, such as announcements via a loudspeaker system, or handbills and leaflets. For anything that can be sent by email though, the walls have come down.

The second trend is a growing distrust in traditionally manufactured "information." Corporate press releases, press conferences, advertising, and the like are more and more seen as possessing suspect and murky agendas. Sometimes, though not always, new media -- such as blogs, podcasts, and YouTube videos -- overcome these suspicions, possessing as they do a less-polished feel to them. Ultimately many consumers of information mitigate their suspicions by developing something like a personal relationship and trust with the source, whether it is an institution or an individual.

These trends make for a bewildering environment in which to operate. Consider two recent phenomena:

In March, Multi-National Forces-Iraq created its own YouTube channel [see more here.] On the homepage for the channel, MNF-I states that

Multi-National Force - Iraq established this YouTube channel to give viewers around the world a "boots on the ground" perspective of Operation Iraqi Freedom from those who are fighting it.

Video clips document action as it appeared to personnel on the ground and in the air as it was shot. We will only edit video clips for time, security reasons, and/or overly disturbing or offensive images.

What you will see on this channel in the coming months:

- Combat action

- Interesting, eye-catching footage

- Interaction between Coalition troops and the Iraqi populace.

- Teamwork between Coalition and Iraqi troops in the fight against terror.

At the same time, a controversy recently erupted about the Army's new guidance for posting on message boards, blogging, emailing, sending letters home, or creating a resume. The controversy was due to the fact that the going perception of the new policy was that it was intended to shut down personal blogs by Army members. Apparently this was not the case. Nevertheless, the fact is that within two months of each other, one military agency -- MNF-Iraq -- sought to decentralize its informational goals, while another -- the Army -- sought to put added restrictions or layers of oversight on the informational capabilities of its soldiers.

What is to be done?

In such a confusing media environment, how might the Marine Corps enable its small-unit leaders to become as effective in the informational domain as the strategic cameraman described above? Here are three possible solutions:

1) A Media Intent: Marines are used to operating within a commander's intent. Why not have an intent for electronic media, at even the lowest levels? Such guidance would serve to lay down some clear expectations and endstates for the production and distribution of electronic media in a war zone. Rather than simple censorship, a media intent statement might allow Marines to focus their own electronic efforts toward the commander's endstate.

Such a statement might sound like this:

Reporting indicates that insurgent leaders in the area are attempting to spread the rumor that the Coalition is fabricating evidence that it finds when conducting home searches in our AO. I want to produce footage showing that every arrest we make after searching a home is tied to concrete evidence found at the site.

2) Selective Magnification: Alternately, a commander might designate that everything his unit does is recorded by Marines within it. He could then designate an information cell to cull through the footage to find what he needs for the effects he desires. Such footage might also serve a training and adaptation role, by helping Marines see their own behaviors and tweak them accordingly.

3) Information Specialists: Major Daniel Greenwood recently authored a paper entitled Combined Action Counterinsurgency Concepts: A Proposed Framework for Future Counterinsurgency Operations. Among many other ideas, he argues that:

Future "information specialists" should be recruited and selected for employment at the Company/Platoon level to undermine local insurgent propaganda efforts.

The Marine Corps Recruiting Command employs E-5 Sergeant Marketing/Public Affairs (MPA) specialists at all 48 recruiting stations throughout the nation. Arguably one of the most valuable members of the command, these junior Marines combine their initial public affairs training with imagination, initiative and hard work to interact with the local population, schools and the media, telling the Marine Corps story. This same approach should be employed at the tactical level within the COIN [counterinsurgency] environment.

There's no reason for "strategic corporal" to refer only to some sort of "gotcha" moment.

In his article Counterinsurgency Redux, David Kilcullen argued that one feature of counterinsurgency today is the importance of energizing one's base:

In modern counterinsurgency, the side may win which best mobilizes and energizes its global, regional, and local support base -- and prevents its adversaries doing likewise.

The current generation of Americans in their teens and twenties loves to make media. Those who join the Marine Corps are no exception. Harnessing their technical skill and imagination can help build trust with the populace in a counterinsurgency and fortify the will of the public at home -- allowing positive strategic effects from junior Marines

Josh Manchester is an infantry officer in the Marine Corps Reserve. He thanks Captain Scott Cuomo for his help in developing this article.

FM 3-24, the new Army/Marine Corps Field Manual, was released on December 15th. It was downloaded more than 1.5 million times in the first month after its posting to the Fort Leavenworth and Marine Corps websites and was widely reviewed, including by several Jihadi websites; copies have been found in Taliban training camps in Pakistan.

It is now for the first time available in hard copy from the University of Chicago Press. This version includes a short new Foreword by an undistinguished member of the writing team and a brilliant introduction by Sarah Sewall of the Carr Center for Human Rights at Harvard University, which sponsored the now-famous vetting conference at Leavenworth in February 2006. Released with a cover price of $15, it is heavily discounted on the web. Best of all, the University of Chicago Press donates a portion of the proceeds from this book to the Fisher House Foundation, a private-public partnership that supports America's military families.

As General Petraeus said, "Surely a manual that's on the bedside table of the president, vice president, secretary of defense, 21 of 25 members of the Senate Armed Services Committee and many others deserves a place at your bedside too!"

I've recently joined Small Wars Journal and I want to express my thanks for the terrific debate on my recent 'generalship' piece.

I thought I would share some common questions/comments about the piece, as well as my responses.

Most of the response has been very positive, and some of it has been intensely personal. I've received some very disturbing emails from Soldiers and family members describing how bad leadership has impacted their lives. To be honest, I was not prepared for that response and I'm very troubled by what I've heard.

The most common criticism of the piece is that I did not address the role of civilian authorities more explicitly. While I don't think a serving officer should publicly criticize civil authorities, there is a more substantive question here. Who does society hold responsible for the application of non-military instruments of power to achieve the aims of policy? That's a much larger question than the one I took on regarding the responsibilities of general officers. However, it's a fair question that I would like to take a stab at eventually. Any thoughts on this topic are very much appreciated.

Many people have asked me what impact this piece will have on my career. I don't know the answer to that question, and I don't mean to be dismissive or overly stoic, but I don't think it's a very important issue. There are Soldiers and Marines and family members who have risked and sacrificed much more than promotion to full colonel over the last six years.

What I hope will happen: increased Congressional oversight of the systems that produce our senior leaders. Also, that junior leaders believe that our system of governance is capable of self-correction on even the most important issues.

What I fear might happen: inaction by political and senior military authorities, coupled with growing resentment and disillusionment by our junior leaders. I'm very worried about the communication gap between stars and bars, and I hope that my article does not make matters worse. As I said, I've been surprised by the emotional intensity of some of the responses I've received.

An interesting observation. The Vietnam generation did not fully assimilate their experiences until after the war was over. In units and service schools, the captains, majors and lieutenant colonels discussed their experiences, drew conclusions and argued for reform. In the information age, this dialogue happens in real time. Junior leaders are able to compare what senior leaders say with what's happening on the ground in a matter of minutes. I don't think our organizational models and leadership theories have caught up with the impacts of the information age. That's probably a statement of the obvious to most, but came as a revelation to a Luddite like me.

I welcome your questions and comments and am very honored to be part of SWJ.

V/R

Paul

While I spoke with senior officers -- General Petraeus, LtGen Odierno and MajGen Gaskin run an open organization that goes out of its way to let a journalist accompany any unit -- they were happy to have me go out and take a look for myself. Appended is a list of those who so generously shared their views.

Below are some observations, with my conclusions under point #18. In a nutshell, for the US to achieve the goal of relative stability in Iraq, by the end of 2007 three battlefield conditions must be met. First, Iraq's predominantly Shiite army must demonstrate a strategy and a momentum against a resumption of Shiite ethnic cleansing in and around Baghdad. Second, in Anbar the Iraqi army and the predominantly Sunni police must sustain the momentum for eradicating al Qaeda in Iraq. Third, in the rest of the Sunni Triangle, the Iraqi Army must prevent al Qaeda from developing sanctuaries.

Background. Iraq's 26 million traumatized inhabitants have few leaders, are rent by religious and ethnic antagonisms, and are slaughtered and terrified by the Grendel-like monster called al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). The reasonable timeline for counterinsurgency and nation-building under such conditions is ten to twenty years. The administration and the Pentagon attempted to complete "full-spectrum counterinsurgency" - i.e., clear, hold and rebuild the key cities - in 2005, transition to Iraqi forces in 2006, and begin leaving in 2007. If accomplished, that would have been the fastest turnaround in history.

In 2006, US troops did indeed fall back into Forward Operating Bases in order to reduce the visibility of Americans. Soldiers on patrol drove to and from the capital in armored humvees, a tactic one colonel said was equivalent "to observing the shoreline through the periscope of a submarine". The murderous AQI bombing campaign against Shiites, though, provoked ethnic cleansing in and around Baghdad by the Jesh al Mahdi (JAM) militia. Baghdad was slowly falling apart as the violence increased and the American soldiers stood on the sidelines.

In response, President Bush, supported by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, surged five brigades into and around Baghdad, and a new commander, General David Petraeus, implemented a Surge Strategy based on classic counterinsurgency principles. The key was deploying American companies throughout the city in concert with Iraqi police and soldiers. It was back to "clear and hold" again.

The surge is off to a good start. It is, however, based on borrowed forces. The US troops were "borrowed" by a (final?) withdrawal upon the good will of the American electorate, and the Iraqi troops were borrowed from the Kurds and from Anbar, both of which will reclaim them. Thus, at the end of the surge, Baghdad has to maintain stability with fewer American and Iraqi forces.

Observations.

1. Dynamism in April. Iraq is a low-level war with scarcely any firefights above a squad level. In this war, the moral/psychological is to the physical as 20 is to 1. The new American military team has infused the effort with energy and strategic clarity, and seized the initiative. The two primary battlefields - Anbar and Baghdad - share a common characteristic: momentum at the battalion level favors the Coalition and Iraqi Security Forces (ISF).

In Anbar, the unknown is whether the government in Baghdad, especially the Ministry of Interior, will provide the resources to reinforce the unexpected success. In Baghdad, the unknown is whether Jesh al Mahdi (JAM) leaders will resume attacks. On both battle fronts, American rifle companies are the steel rods in concrete that is just beginning to harden.

2. Energy at the local level. In February, Petraeus divided the city into sectors and immediately set up "combat outposts" and "joint coordinating centers". These are analogous to beefed-up police precinct stations, from which American and Iraqi soldiers and local Iraqi police patrol the neighborhoods - hopefully together. The intent is to bring security to the population at the local level.

American soldiers take to this more readily than do the Iraqi forces. There's tremendous variance from station to station among the size, composition and frequency of patrols. Police in the US are more uniform in their coverage and patrol rates because they've had centuries to develop the system, while only in the past few years has the American military accepted that the mission in Iraq is more a policing than a military task.

Nonetheless, where I accompanied patrols in four different districts in Baghdad, the population did manifest trust in the American soldiers. Their industry and good will had not escaped the notice of the residents. There was less of the sullen hostility that I had encountered in prior visits to Ghazilia and Rusafa, although Adamiah remained the toughest nut. Similarly, in the JAM bastions of Khadamiah and Sadr City, there were not the mannerisms and gestures of instinctive anti-Americanism, perhaps because many top JAM leaders have left for safer locales.

3. What's next at the local level in 2007? Money and a shift in responsibility. When American companies embed in an area for months, they get to know the local civilian, military and police leaders. They see the friction and hear the complaints. Company commanders have some money they can spend on local projects, but the procedures are cumbersome. It would be much preferable to give each combat outpost or joint center a line of credit of, say, $20,000 a month. That way, every month the Iraqi security leaders, local leaders and Americans could meet to allocate something specific, opening a dialogue.

For the Americans to move out, competent non-sectarian Iraqi security leaders must replace them. The police in Baghdad use most of their manpower at checkpoints and lack the training to respond to persistent attacks. They rarely patrol on foot, are mistrusted with good reason by the Sunnis and viewed skeptically by many of the Shiites.

It is not clear if the Iraqi security forces will be substantially improved in quality within the next year. Time, though, does alter conditions. A habit takes about twelve weeks to develop. Better military habits can be transferred over time from the American to the Iraqi units, and the Ministry of Defense is the least sectarian agency and preaches that its soldiers are Iraqis, not Sunni or Shiite.

The police cannot be entirely discounted, but the army is the more credible defense against a resurgent JAM offensive. The local effectiveness of the army is critically dependent upon the battalion commander and one or two aggressive company commanders.

The Americans on-scene will be able to judge that. They know who the bad apples are that must be replaced. At least one three-star Iraqi general, two division commanders and several battalion commanders have been relieved due to pressure, including giving the details to the press. That must continue. The goal in every district has to be an acceptable level of trust between the community and the local Iraqi security commander.

4. 2008: How can success be reinforced while numbers decrease? By enhancing the role of the adviser. In Baghdad, The Surge has generated momentum and optimism. Excepting monstrous car bombings, it is likely violence will decrease. What carries beyond The Surge into 2008 is less clear.

In Baghdad, the police, primarily manning checkpoints, will remain distinctly secondary to the Iraqi Army as a stabilizing force. Among Iraqi and US army units, there is wide variation in the number and jointness of the patrols that are the basic tool for securing the population. One advisory team daily leaves the wire, motivating its Iraqi battalion to conduct ten patrols a day. Another team focuses upon staff improvements, and its battalion conducts four patrols a day. One US unit patrols on foot with the Iraqis; another rides in humvees without Iraqis, etc.

The American military stresses decentralized execution, although force protection measures - such as insisting that three or more humvees travel together at all times - are instituted from the top down. Battalion and company commanders decide how they will operate in their own areas, and operating concepts differ markedly. Some commanders prefer night raids; some stress mounted patrols; others insist on foot patrols. There is not a standardized template for providing security from one neighborhood to the next.

Because the mission of urban policing is foreign to the military, the result is a variation of methods and operational styles that one would not see, say, among police departments in the US. Lacking are generally accepted quantitative standards or criteria, like arrests or clearance rates, by which to measure achievement. Even the definition of "patrol" is highly elastic. There is, though, the trustworthy judgment of American company and battalion commanders - the "I know it when I see it" factor in evaluating the degree of security in a neighborhood. So what you have in Baghdad is training by example - the offensive tempo set by American units is being copied by Iraqi units.

This variation does not gainsay a likely diminution in violence; increased numbers of armed forces do reduce criminal activity. That brings us to 2008. Assuming security does improve, how is it sustained as US units leave? The burden shifts to an advisory corps that must sustain by example a non-sectarian, offensive attitude in Iraqi battalions, without the comforting presence of a "partnered" American battalion. The adviser is the coach. He is also the one who receives the best information whether the unit is doing its job. He's in a tough spot, but a highly rewarding one if done with the right attitude. (I urge all advisers to read Once a Warrior King, because that is what they are, for probably the only time in their military careers.)

The implication for 2008 seems obvious: the advisers will be glue holding stability gains together. The adviser team leaders will be chosen this summer. To entice the best, the US Army and Marine Corps must offer commensurate incentives. To do so is an old and sore point that will provoke debate inside both services.

5. The national level - not the local level - is the critical impediment. The heart of the problem is that Iraqi society is extraordinarily hierarchical, and the top level is failing. Under the current circumstances, what occurred in Anbar is likely to repeat in Baghdad: security will improve as the Iraqi security forces turn to the Americans as their natural security partner, rather than turning to their own government.

How they can be extracted is the challenge that looms in 2008. It may sound like I'm getting ahead of myself. But we all do that with the stock market. That is, we absorb and discount the present value as we try to anticipate the future. The Petraeus strategy makes sense. While he will not report until September, it's not too early to ask: what happens if there is more stability by summer's end? What then?

The Iraqi army at the battalion level - and many police units - is advancing at an acceptable pace; it is the performance at the national level that is unacceptable. The Shiites govern defensively and reactively, as if they expected to be stripped of their huge majority. Yes, the ministries lack competence due to the dismissal of the Baathists and the flight of the educated class from Iraq. Lack of capacity, however, can be compensated by the activism of advisers and American logistic skills. Currently, for instance, many advisers pick up and supervise the payrolls of Iraqi battalions and police, fuel is routinely provided when it technically shouldn't be, etc.

As distinct from a lack of capacity, however, there is no means of compensating for determined sectarianism or corrosive obduracy. Iraqi Army officers who do not hesitate to arrest Shiite militia are too frequently relieved of command and shifted to other duties. It is no secret which ministries and personalities have failed and obstructed too often to be tolerated. Some senior people have to be removed from power. This is the key challenge facing the State Department, requiring remarkable skill, cunning and, above all, a sense of urgency.

The American tendency to try to prevail while tolerating malfeasance within the Iraqi senior ranks - viz. MoI or the Oil Ministry - is defended as realpolitik. But we cannot excuse inaction by blaming the political system we imposed. Nor should we compare, as General Abizaid was fond of doing, the Iraqi cabinet to our Founding Fathers, who risked their lives, families and fortunes, led in battle and endured all privations alongside the common soldiers - without the refuge of the Green Zone, without gangs of bodyguards with murky backgrounds, and without mortgage-free flats in fashionable London as an escape hatch.

History offers scant solace: Countering an insurgency without the ability to promote the competent and fire the disloyal and the disastrous is an uphill battle.

6. Peeling-the-onion strategy. The Surge Strategy appears to have four components. First, bring security to the population on a local level. Second, infuse local projects so the residents see some economic gains. This is lagging. Most glaring is the failure - due to connivance among corrupt officials, criminals and insurgents - to deliver propane and fuel so that the population can move about and commerce can circulate. Third, peel away the irreconcilables - prominently al Qaeda and JAM death squads - by shooting or imprisoning them. Fourth, reconcile the majority of Sunni insurgents and Shiite militia through government reforms, legislation and compromise.

Based on the talent, candor and experience of our military leaders and strategic staff now assembled, flaws in that strategy should not be a major concern.

As for the house-cleaning necessary for unity of effort on the Iraqi side, it is not clear whether the State Department will dispatch to Ambassador Crocker a team of tough diplomats with the mission of driving into exile those Iraqi officials who are working against their nation's interests. Of the top 150 Iraqi political, ministerial and military leaders down to battalion commanders, perhaps 25% should be dismissed and ten percent must be fired.

And while national-level legislation such as the hydrocarbon law is necessary to provide assurances of national unity and acceptable proportionality of resources, it is not clear legislation will motivate many insurgents and militia to desist. Local deals will still be necessary, and they are more likely among the Shiite militia than among the Sunni insurgent groups that are more mobile and lack a defined home base. To date, the thousands of Sunnis who claim to be "the honorable resistance" have laid out absurd conditions, suggesting that productive negotiations reflect results on the battlefield. If other insurgencies is a guide, guerrillas accept political terms only when losing.

So while the strategy is clear and logical, the challenges are immense.

7. Imprison the irreconcilables. At the same time, the irreconcilable Sunni insurgents and Shiite militia must be killed or captured. There's a big problem here. The number of insurgents killed is quite low. Iraq, especially Baghdad, is not a shooting war; it's a police war, and police keep order by arrests, not by shootings. But since the scandal of Abu Ghraib, the American military has sought to get out of the arrest business and turn all prisoners over to an Iraqi judicial system that does not exist.

By most historical measures, Iraq - if on the path to prevailing over the Sunni insurgency and the Shiite militias - should be holding 50,000 to 75,000 or more. The current numbers are far less: Americans are holding roughly 19,000 and the Iraqis are holding around 20,000.

A major debate is raging about the rights of the individual arrested versus the rights of a society at war. Since 2003, the American military has released about 43,000 prisoners. Many of those released should never have been locked up, particularly not alongside hard-core extremists. Advocates of more releases point to a re-arrest rate of 11% as evidence of very low recidivism. Opponents claim that recidivism is likely to be above the US rate of 60%, and that the few re-arrests point to the prevalence of intimidation, leading to the passive support of the population wherever the insurgency or JAM puts down roots.

In the midst of a war, lip service is given to the phrase "rule of law", meaning that Iraq should abide by the strictures of a Western liberal society. A new prison for 6,000 is being built in Baghdad, to be staffed with live-in judges. There are multiple levels of review of the evidence for holding a detainee. Most detainees are released prior to appearing before a judge.

In reality, the American system judges whether a detainee should be incarcerated for the long term. If the answer is yes, it asks an Iraqi judge to confirm the decision. Iraqi judges still release 45%, despite the evidence against the accused that persuaded the Americans. Opponents of release therefore argue that the more insurgents brought before the judges, the more will be released, resulting in more attacks against Americans.

Some Iraqi and US officials favor another mass release of several thousand, while other officials are adamantly opposed. Since the Surge Strategy began, both US and Iraqi forces have been imprisoning more detainees. As a result, the American and Iraqi prisons are stuffed full, and there are no plans to build more immediate capacity proportionate to the scale of the war. This issue is unresolved and will not fade away. If mishandled, it will gravely imperil the war effort. It makes no sense to release those who will kill you.

8. Concrete barriers are imperative. The suicide bomber is a long-term terror. Americans tolerate millions of hours of inconvenience daily at airport security checkpoints. Barriers to reduce the bloodshed from murderous bombers should have been erected years ago in Baghdad. That such protection has been limned as an offense to civil rights reflects poorly on the instincts of too many in the press.

9. Tracking the battle lines. Surprisingly, I saw no citywide photo map that showed the forward lines - Sunni houses in one color, Shiite in another and abandoned in a third. Yet at every outpost, the watch officers pointed out the lines on their local photomaps. In northern Ghazilia, ethnic cleansing had oozed forward a bit - a few more Sunnis evicted and Shiite families had moved in since my last visit; in Rastamiah, families had returned. It would be relatively simple to aggregate these battle lines once a week.

10. Anbar has improved due to years of persistent effort in fighting, an increase in forces and the swing of the tribes. A year ago, the Sunnis in Anbar were in denial, fearing al Qaeda in Iraq, yet hoping to regain the power they had enjoyed under Saddam. For years, I watched American regimental commanders warn the sheiks and local councils that one day the Americans would be gone and al Qaeda would rule, unless they stood up. Now some of the tribes are doing so, and Sunni recruits for the police are standing in line.

11. Neuter the Ministry of Interior. The Ministry of Interior, with adequate money, will not release the funds to hire more police in Anbar and to reinforce success on the ground. Senior Iraqi leaders are aware of the situation, yet tolerate the inaction. The MoI's prejudice against Sunni Anbar hurts the war effort.

MoI is so dysfunctional that many officers told me it should be neutered as an organization, becoming the paymaster for the provincial governors who would raise and direct the police outside Baghdad, while inside the capital the police would gradually be placed under military supervision.

12. Greatly increase the Iraqi forces in Anbar. Terror coexists with progress in Anbar. For instance, in Habbineah, I watched a father refused treatment for his son, saying he would be killed if he accepted medical help from the Americans or the Iraqi soldiers. In Haditha, residents who are now secure insisted to me that the irahibin (al Qaeda in Iraq) would return to rout the police, if the Marines left. In Fallujah, city leaders are routinely assassinated and Iraqi forces have stopped patrolling the Pizza Slice/Blackwater Bridge in the trouble-plagued Jolan western end of the city. What is called the Murder and Intimidation (M&I) strategy of AQI is flourishing.

One reason is that Iraqi forces are instinctive raiders who prefer defensive strong points from which they sally forth in large numbers, especially when they have a fixed target. Patrolling in small numbers to hold those neighborhoods where they have no relatives - in other words, securing the population - does not come naturally.

A second reason is that the US has never designed and implemented a police strategy to identify the population and take away the insurgent's ability to move by car from locale to locale, murdering and escaping. This defect is addressed at point #12 below.

In addition, the American emphasis upon force protection has affected risk-taking by Iraqi forces. Four armored humvees are required for each US patrol; every soldier and Marine wears layers of protective armor, etc. This has conveyed a message to the Iraqi forces: casualties are to be avoided. When human life is held equally dear but one ally invests ten times the capital, then the ally with less resources adapts more conservative tactics to balance the scales; e.g., not patrolling in areas where there are snipers.

They cannot fight the war the way we do. Yet the more we patrol together, the more they become accustomed to our style, our constraints and our supporting logistics. The solution is not to believe that the ISF will, on their own, patrol like Americans if given another year. Instead, add recruits to the ISF and associates like the tribal forces and let them do what comes naturally: prevail by hugely greater numbers at the point of attack.

In Anbar, for instance, today there are about 18,000 Iraqi and 33,000 Coalition forces. Given the vast distances and an insurgency that numbers over 10,000, several officers suggested a goal of 40,000 Iraqi soldiers and police by the end of 2008. The Marines have so developed their linkages with the tribes that such numbers are credible. Lacking such numbers, these officers implied a need for some highly mobile US battalions launching company-sized operations for years to come.

13. An insurgency cannot be won if the insurgents cannot be identified. The lack of an identification system and census tied to individual houses remains the single greatest technical failure of the war. After four years, the Pentagon is distributing handheld devices to take fingerprint and iris scans. There remain two basic technical flaws. First, the devices called HIDE are not tied directly into a large common database. Unlike the devices used by the US border patrol and Chicago police, a squad on patrol cannot send a print over the radio and get an immediate response Instead, the squad has to bring the suspect back to its combat outpost for further identification, if his fingerprint is not already resident in the small database inside the handheld device.

Second, thousands of man-hours have been wasted by hundreds of rifle companies taking separate census without a common framework to pull the efforts together and pass the data from one company to the next. In the US, Google can be queried re criminal offenders, and maps of every city will reveal the locations of the offenders and their past history. Nothing similar has been instituted in Iraq. Yet photomaps exist that detail every house in Baghdad and all other cities in Iraq. To replace the current random catch-as-catch-can effort requires a concept of operations that concentrates the HIDE devices in specific districts to conduct a full census whose data can be displayed on a geographic map.

14. Iran's influence is malign. Probably in reaction to accepting in 2002 intelligence assessments about Iraq that proved false, the press has bent over backward not to link the central government of Iran with explosive devices, money transfers and Iranian agents active inside Iraq. I was surprised how frequently both Iraqi officials and American officers told me that Iran was in essence waging a proxy war against the US. Whatever the extent of its actual influence over and through the Shiite militias, Iran is widely perceived as a malign influence and the US has found no strategy to compel Iran to desist.

15. Beware the Thieu syndrome. Congressional expressions that the war is lost are unhelpful, and not just because they encourage the enemy. From 1973 on, the Thieu government lost faith in American support and clammed up. Without American knowledge, Thieu ordered a pullback from the central highlands. This precipitated panic and disaster.

It seems obvious that Mr. Maliki's confidants are bruiting scenarios that consolidate Shiite power and territory, unchallenged by an American rebuttal that explicates the folly of foolish thinking. (Indeed, an explicit narrative in Arabic detailing how and why blood would continue to be shed ought to be circulated widely throughout the Assembly.) By the end of 2007, the United Nations must pass another Security Council resolution approving the Coalition's actions in Iraq. This requires prior negotiations that could be touchy if, like Thieu, Mr. Maliki privately believes he must gain the authority to rearrange sectors to hedge against American withdrawal. There may, for instance, be a temptation to retrench in Anbar. The danger lies in unintended consequences that ignite a cascade of emotions such as occurred in the first week of April, 2004, when catastrophe was narrowly avoided.

The Americans didn't see it coming with Thieu. It would be prudent to examine now Thieu-type precipitate actions by the GoI.

16. Citizenship deserved. The US could not achieve a satisfactory end state in Iraq without the courage of the Iraqi translators who live with every American battalion and risk their lives every day. Many of them are men without a country. Because they have been so loyal to us Americans, they are distrusted by many in the Iraqi police and army. They remain alive by hiding their identities. Their numbers are few, perhaps 4,000. Surely DoD and the State Department can persuade the Congress to pass legislation enabling citizenship, if so desired, for all translators who are recommended by their battalion commanders.

17. Dedication. I've read about our army being "broken", and certainly much more time at home for the units is deserved. I'm not Pollyannaish; I heard the complaints about the extension, etc. But I was out with enough different units to attest to the energy and mission focus of our soldiers and marines. These are good guys and they understand the strategy Petraeus has laid out. The core of our strength lies in our battalions and at that level it has positively infected the performance of the Iraqi battalions and the local police.

AQI are mean bastards, but they can be broken. That means they have to be put away permanently when caught, or put in the earth.

18. Standing back. From this trip, five variables struck me.

1. The sense of momentum that the surge strategy and leadership have infused into the effort.

2. The biggest challenge is at the top level of the Iraqi government, to include the National Assembly. It is very uncertain whether the higher ranks of the Iraqis can rise above the concept that seniority means privilege and can compromise with the Sunnis, when past oppression has been so real and pervasive. If the top persists in passive or active anti-Sunni manifestations, the effort is doomed.

3. The persistence of the murder and intimidation campaign. An increase in the number and the certainty of imprisonments is needed. More broadly, given that in Fallujah and elsewhere the numbers of Iraqi forces have not been enough in themselves, a police-based strategy is needed for rooting out the assassins. The root of the dilemma is the American insistence upon strict rules of law that are foreign to the Iraqi culture and have not been supplemented by American detective methods as a substitute for the old Iraqi way of doing business.

4. The vast distances versus the modest mobility and sustainability of Iraqi forces favor the mobile insurgent. An identification system - not episodic gestures - is imperative. That way, the mobility and anonymity of the insurgents are limited. Identification, though, also means trust in the ministries of government - a problematic assumption.

5. AQI must be beaten psychologically. Both JAM and AQI prey on the weak. They don't fight each other or the Iraqi army. The Iraqis in Special Forces units scorn the AQI and literally chase them down during night raids. The jundi don't express any particular fear of them. Yet AQI has a mystique of ferocity among the people, too many of whom believe AQI zealotry will overwhelm the Iraqi security forces.

The Iraqi Army must break that mystique by picking fights, by venturing into areas like the Zidon, by publicly mocking and humiliating the AQI and by smashing it.

In appreciation for their guidance and insights, I wish to acknowledge:

Maj Doug Dudgeon

LtCol Brian Alexander

Maj Richard Wallwork, UK

Maj Tom Ziegler

LtCol Jeff Smitherman

Mr Jim Soriano

Alex al Bayaa

MajGen Murthi

MajGen Rick Olson, (ret)

MajGen Tariq

Maj Jeff Sutherland

MajGen Fastabend

Capt Jeremy Anzevino

SSgt John Wear

Col Jeff Witksken

Lt Newton

Maj Abdul Farouk

Col Mark Martins

Maj Sly Sylvester

Mayor Abdul Hakim

LtCol Howard Feng

Capt Scott Gilman

LtCol James Bierman

SgtFC Christine Thompson

Capt Bo Dennis

Gunny Johnson

MajGen Bill Caldwell

Maj Bruce Vitor

Cpl Randy Ortiz

"Matthew"

Col Steve Boylan

"Joseph" from Jordan

LtCol Bob Peller

Lt Roger Hollenbeck

LCpl Alex Bartoli

Col H.R. McMaster

SSgt Kevin Buckley

LCpl Luke Kern

Col Lockey

LtCol Muhamed Nashmi

Namk Nuri Kaleb

Col Phil Sternhagen

MajGen Walt Gaskin

Capt Mike Armsted

LtCol Kenneth Beebe

LtGen Raymond Odierno

SSgt Robert Hays

LtCol Brian Durant

MajGen Mark Gurganus

Lt Andrew Duncan

Col Mary Ellen Jaddick

MajGen Abdul Salam

Capt Ty Barger

BG Assam

LtCol Doug Mason

Sheik Hamid al-mhana

"Mario" al Sadria

Deputy Police Chief Kareem

Maj Mike Manning

Sgt Jason Fabrizi

MajGen Hamad Showka

Col H.S. Clardy

Capt Fahed Zoher

BG John Allen

Maj Zappa

Maj Brian Ellis

Gen David Petraeus

Col Khalid

BG Hussein Wahed

Andy from Beirut

LtCol Bill Jurney

Capt Jay Stewart

Sammy Basam Khazivya

Salam Kiasvbien

David "Slim"

LtCol John Reeves

Lt Jared Towles

Allah Alarki

Mayor Sa'ad Awad

Lt Michael Stempfad

Capt Casey Moes

Dan (spec ops)

Capt Kyle Sloan

SSgt Dale Dukes

Joe (spec ops)

Spec. Gene Matson

SSgt Stuart Toney

Police Chief Faisal

Capt Jody White

Maj Eric Stetson

Sheik Abdul Ikthar

Lt William Patrick

SSgt Vincent Clinard

Cpl Weiser Tyler

LtCol Salam Abbas

Sgt Robin Johnson

Maj Todd Sermarini

LtCol Rafea Alawani

LtCol Josslyn Aberle

Shiek Mishen

Capt Ahmed Sharki

Maj Dan Rouse

Maj Lippo

Maj David Zappa

Capt Cecil Strickland

LtCol Joe L'Etoile

Amar Dahan Nael

Capt. Nathaniel Waggoner

Maj Jeff Pool

MasterGuns Luis Hernandez

1stSgt Kenneth Hendrix

Lt Barry Edwards

Abdel Abouhana

SSgt Nicholas Pelter

Capt Wallace

SSgt Jeff Harilson

Sgt Ryan Wood

Capt Jonathan Riggs

Col Peter Mansoor

Gunny Tim Ybay

SgtMaj Michael Barrett

Mr David Kilcullen

Capt Scott Gilman

Sgt Brian Johnson

Maj Joel Rayburn

ILPO Jim Riley

Capt George Hassetine

Maj Pat Proctor

Hassan Benkato

ColJohn Pollock

Maj Robert Hunter

SSgt Marquis Franklin

Lt Sam Cartee

Capt Eric Peterson

"Walid"

Sgt James Moore

Sheik Hamid Aymen

Sgt Robert Thompson

Lt Clint Gebke

Spec Joshua Simpson

Pvt Cody Stewart

Pfc Michael Moses

LCdr Buzz Mason

LtCol Brian Alexander

What follows are several examples (many more can be found in the SWJ Reference Library) recently received by the SWJ to include papers written by students at the Marine Corps University, Naval Post Graduate School and Kings College in London. The last paper was submitted by a retired Marine Corps lieutenant colonel now working irregular warfare issues for the US Department of Defense.

Other works posted or linked to in the SWJ library include papers by students and faculty at the National Defense University, Army War College, Marine Corps War College, Air War College, Army Command and General Staff College, Army School of Advanced Military Studies and the Marine Corps School of Advanced Warfare.

At the SWJ there is a standing 'call for papers' -- especially from students at our Professional Military Education institutions.

Enough said, on to our recent acquisitions...

Combined Action Counterinsurgency Concept (CACC): A Proposed Framework for Future Counterinsurgency Operations -- US Marine Corps Command and Staff College Master of Military Studies thesis by Major Daniel Greenwood, USMC.

As recent events in Iraq portend, the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) will increasingly diverge from conventional warfare. Terrorists dispersed throughout the world will continue refining and employing guerilla tactics using civilian populations as their base of operations. This transnational enemy, maximizing modern technology, weaponry, and media, is highly indiscernible, imbedded in the local culture from which it operates. It is proficient at undermining the interests and credibility of the United States on all levels. It is questionable that conventional military doctrine, tactics, and weaponry can achieve decisive results against this evolving threat. This problem requires a new operational concept of counterinsurgency designed to connect tactical level success with the achievement of strategic objectives. Several historical precedents including the Combined Action Program (CAP) and Civil Operation and Revolutionary Development Support (CORDS) of Vietnam, the recent CAP application in Iraq, and Provisional Reconstruction Teams (PRT) in Afghanistan, provide a starting point for innovative adaptation to an insurgent enemy threat. However, they do not reflect the holistic approach required of such a complex operating environment. This study analyzes the characteristics of modern insurgency and historical counterinsurgency methods to propose an adaptable Combined Action Counterinsurgency Concept (CACC) to provide a conceptual framework for the problem of insurgency. This concept is designed to generate thought, development, experimentation, and training on the execution of COIN operations...

Reexamining the Operational Relevance of Chapter IV -- Small Wars Manual 1940 - US Marine Corps Command and Staff College Master of Military Studies thesis by Major Adam Strickland, USMC.

The purpose of this document is to expand upon the basic tenets of small wars training as originally detailed in Chapter IV of the Small Wars Manual, in order to provide an additional and updated guide to the current conduct and design of small wars training. Above all, this document seeks to provide Marines with a new way of thinking about preparing for and executing irregular warfare, and a framework for clear and rapid analysis that will generate tempo and temporal advantage. All training for small wars must begin with a solid understanding of maneuver warfare as articulated in MCDP 1- Warfighting. Small wars demand that we infuse subordinates with the ability to rapidly maneuver temporally by enabling them to use initiative to make decisions faster than adversaries. Due to our continued emphasis on temporal maneuver, influence operations, and ability to achieve asymmetric effects, we must include psychological training as an essential component of small wars instruction. Cultural training and planning should attempt to identify ways to use the three most common forces of popular influence in a culturally specific context: nationalism and national policies, religion and customs, and material well-being and progress. All training evolutions should begin with a review or discussion of the commander's intent, followed by an operational center of gravity analysis. In small wars, intelligence gathering, analysis, and dissemination are arguably the most essential tasks...

Progressive Reconstruction: A Methodology for Stabilization and Reconstruction Operations -- Naval Postgraduate School thesis by Major Karl Rohr, USMC.

The intent of the author is to establish a methodology for future forcible interventions in the affairs of failed, failing or rogue and terrorist sponsoring states in order to stabilize and democratize these nations in accordance with stated United States goals. The argument follows closely current and developing United States military doctrine on stabilization, reconstruction, and counterinsurgency operations. Further the author reviews several past interventions from 1844 to the present. Conducting a survey of colonial, imperialist as well as pre and post WWII, Cold War, post Cold War and post September 11th interventions to determine the techniques and procedures that proved most successful, the author proposes a program of intervention and reconstruction called Progressive Reconstruction that incorporates many of the successful activities of these past and present doctrines. The cornerstone of the methodology is the combination of rapid decisive combat and stabilization operations leading to a series of governmental transitions from foreign direct and indirect to indigenous independent rule...

Countering Insurgents through Distributed Operations: Insights from Malaya 1948-1960 -- Journal of Strategic Studies (link) by David Ucko, Department of War Studies, King's College London.

This article examines the emerging US Marine Corps concept of 'Distributed Operations' (DO) and its applicability to counter-insurgency. DO involves dispersing the force and empowering decentralized units so as to create a network of mobile, agile and adaptable cells, each operating with a significant degree of autonomy yet in line with the commander's overall intent. This concept's applicability to irregular campaigns is assessed with reference to the Malayan Emergency, in which the British and Commonwealth forces employed dispersed and decentralized small-unit formations to great effect. The article teases out the conditions that allowed DO to succeed in Malaya, and comments on the requirements and implications for the use of DO today in the prosecution of the 'Long War'...

The Basics of Counterinsurgency -- Lieutenant Colonel Scott Moore, USMC (ret.).

This study examines the basic characteristics of insurgencies and counterinsurgency campaigns conducted over the past century, striping away many of the prevailing assumptions. Based on detailed analysis of nearly sixty counterinsurgency campaigns, successful and unsuccessful, as well as the lessons learned by American and Coalition forces in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001, the conclusions offer a historically grounded framework for thinking about counterinsurgency. While every conflict exhibited its own unique causes and conditions requiring tailored solutions, as a whole the many counterinsurgency campaigns exhibited fundamental characteristics that remained constant. If there were no immutable laws or empirical formulas for counterinsurgency, there existed certain basic principles and traits that marked and will continue to mark successful, and unsuccessful, outcomes...