Now that speculation and discussion of a possible attack from Israel on Iranian nuclear development facilities is rampant, it is time to bring back a review I did on the eve of the U.S. invasion of Iraq:

First Strike Guidelines: The Case of Iraq
Project on Defense Alternatives Briefing Memo #25
by Charles Knight, 16 September 2002 (revised and updated 10 March 2003)
http://www.comw.org/pda/0209schneider.html

Excerpt:

…despite the repeated use of the term “preemption” to describe their counterproliferation strategy (see the 2002 National Security Strategy), the Bush administration’s strategic approach to Iraq is one of preventive war. The U.S. Department of Defense defines preventive war as “war initiated in the belief that military conflict, while not imminent, is inevitable, and that to delay would involve greater risk” while it defines preemptive attack as “an attack initiated on the basis of incontrovertible evidence that an enemy attack is imminent.” Preventive war has long been understood to be highly destabilizing and it is nearly impossible to reconcile it with the notions of non-aggression imbedded in the United Nations Charter.

Paul Chapin and George Petrolekas. CDA Institute, February 2012.
http://defensealt.org/xSKPtu

Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. October 2011.
http://defensealt.org/H7NCl2

Joshua Thiel. Small Wars Journal, 12 April 2011.
http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/journal/docs-temp/732-thiel1.pdf

Excerpt:

Maneuver warfare at its core is a mechanistic endeavor and fits with a corresponding necessity of top-down hierarchies. Conversely, counterinsurgency is a more ambiguous environment that varies in its complexity and context; it is the chess match of war. It is different in every locale and can cover the entire spectrum of war simultaneously. Consequently, counterinsurgency is difficult to put on a bumper sticker, to trademark as a catch phrase, or sell to a population and their representatives. In 2006 the United States (U.S.) public’s perception of success or failure of the Iraqi counterinsurgency strategy was concentrated around the concept of massing combat power in time and space, often called the “The Surge.” The term, “The Surge,” condensed a new counterinsurgency strategy into a simple and quantifiable slogan for the sound bite culture surrounding current affairs in the modern world. Unfortunately, counterinsurgency is more complex than “add more and then you win.”

Comment by Gian Gentile:

Joshua said this at the end of the piece:

“…in Afghanistan in 2011, will the victor once again write the history by touting the Afghanistan troop surge of 2010-2011 rather than the decisive operational changes.”

What evidence, I mean hard evidence (and beyond what officers who were part of the Surge recall)that there was a “decisive operational change.”? How much “decisive” operational change can there be in an area security mission where combat forces are dispersed widely and operate in a decentralized manner? This operational framework was in place in Iraq from spring of 2003 on. The answer is that there was not a decisive change in the operational framework. Oh to be sure there were some tweaks made here and there, a few more outposts here and there, but by and large it remained the same.

Unfortunately a narrative has been constructed that posits that a savior General named Petraeus came on board, reinvented his field army operationally and combined with an increase of troops was the primary cause of the lowering of violence. This is a chimera.

Yet folks, especially us in the Army who have spilled blood in these places, want to believe that what happens or doesnt happen is because of us and what we do or dont do, or because of savior generals riding onto the scene.

Yet the foreign policy elite (and many military leaders) in this country love this narrative and want it to stick because it places emphasis and criticism on the mechanics of doing these wars of intervention and state building and away from the strategy and policy that put them into place. Since success in these wars and conflicts are simply a matter of getting the right number of troops on the ground with the right tactics and with the savior general, then they can be won again and again.

As senior Army generals in Afghanistan argue “the right inputs are finally in place,” so too are we already seeing calls in certain quarters for bog in Libya.

But in Iraq it was neither the increase in troops as part of the Surge (as Joshua effectively argues) nor was it a decisive change in operational framework (as he incorrectly asserts) and instead the lowering of violence had to do with other more critical conditions (the spread of the Anbar awakening, the Shia militia stand-down, the physical seperation of Baghdad into sectarian districts) occurring.

Nir Rosen. The Best Defense, 23 February 2010.
http://defensealt.org/HogQCa

Excerpt:

Iraqis on the street are no longer scared of rival militias so much, or of being exterminated and they no longer have as much support for the religious parties. Maliki is still perceived by many to be not very sectarian and not very religious, and more of a “nationalist.” Another thing people would notice if they focused on “the street” is that the militias are finished, the Awakening Groups/SOIs are finished, so violence is limited to assassinations with silencers and sticky bombs and the occasional spectacular terrorist attack — all manageable and not strategically important, even if tragic. Politicians might be talking the sectarian talk but Iraqis have grown very cynical.

Bernard I. Finel. Armed Froces Journal International, February 2010.
http://www.afji.com/2010/02/4387134

Excerpt:

A fundamental challenge in devising a strategy for the use of American military power is that the world has literally never seen anything like it. The U.S. today has military capabilities at least equal to the rest of the world combined. There is virtually no spot on the globe that could not be targeted by American forces, and at most a small handful of countries that could thwart a determined U.S. effort at regime change — and some of those only by virtue of their possession of nuclear weapons.

American military capabilities are not a potential form of power, subject to use only following a lengthy mobilizing and requiring a long campaign to achieve significant goals. Instead, the U.S. can destroy fixed locations in a matter of hours or at most days, and implement regime change in a matter of weeks or a few months.

Because this capability is so novel — dating only to the end of the Cold War — American strategists lack a clear framework to guide the utilization of this force. They have sought to match capabilities to conceptions of the use of force from a different era, one in which the Cold War made regime change unpalatable due to the risk of escalation and that tended to make localized setbacks appear as loses in a perceived zero-sum competition with the Soviets.

The reason, in other words, that the U.S. didn’t simply remove Fidel Castro from power was that after 1962, the international consequences seemed too high and the goal too risky. The reason American leaders felt compelled to engage in a lengthy counterinsurgency in Vietnam was the concern that a communist victory would have been a setback in the broader struggle. But imagine a world in which there were few or no international consequences to removing Castro from power, and imagine a world in which the commitment to Vietnam was strictly commensurate to the threat that the Vietnamese communists could pose to the U.S. That is the change in context that has occurred over the past 20 years, and the U.S. has not yet adapted.

Editor’s Comment:

And so many in the U.S. choose to ignore how this dominant military power motivates other nations to seek nuclear weaponry or hold tightly to those they have acquired already!

Majority Staff, Subcommittee on Contracting Oversight, 16 December 2009. Hosted on the Commonwealth Institute website.
http://www.comw.org/qdr/fulltext/2009-12-16StaffMemo.pdf

Excerpt:

[The] number of Defense Department Contractors in Afghanistan May reach 160,000. There are currently 104,000 Defense Department contractors working in Afghanistan. The increase in troops may require an additional 56,000 Defense Department contractors, bringing the total number of Defense contractors in Afghanistan to 160,000.

Moshe Schwartz. Congressional Research Service, 14 December 2009.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/24124212/CRS-Contractors-Study-12-09

Stephen M. Walt. ForeignPolicy.com, 30 November 2009.
http://defensealt.org/HRJEyM

Excerpt:

Yet if you really want to know “why they hate us,” … the fact remains that the United States has killed a very large number of Arab or Muslim individuals over the past three decades.

Editor’s Comment:

And no amount of “public diplomacy” or “American narrative” will win friends when the U.S. is responsible for killing sons and daughters of people in their home land. That is a basic piece of strategic wisdom!

Philip Giraldi. antiwar.com, 26 November 2009.
http://original.antiwar.com/giraldi/2009/11/25/the-cost-of-war/

Excerpt:

Why are these wars so expensive? It goes back to Napoleon: logistics. US bases in Iraq are supplied by a 344-mile road running north from huge depots in Kuwait and by another artery running south from Turkey, both of which require convoys of trucks with armed guards dramatically raising the costs of everything being brought in. It is similar in Afghanistan but worse.

response by Michael Brenner to question posed by James Kitfield on National Journal Expert Blog, 19 November 2009.
http://security.nationaljournal.com/2009/11/are-american-muslims-a-threat.php#1393085

Excerpt:

…all it would take to restore sanity is some slight reflection on our dismal performance everywhere we have tried our hand at manipulation in the Greater Middle East since 9/11. We have been consistently arrogant, incompetent, corrupt – in all senses, callous to the pain inflicted on the natives and ourselves alike, and abject failures.

Joost R. Hiltermann. New York Review of Books, 19 November 2009.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/23371

Excerpt:

Festering unresolved for years, the Kirkuk conflict has started to contaminate Baghdad politics to the point of disabling Maliki’s government. It has already complicated efforts to create a law governing petroleum and natural gas, for example, and it may well hold up the formation of a new government in the spring. America’s legacy in Iraq could be a divided country that is left to fight over an undefined boundary with Kurdistan while a dysfunctional Baghdad government governs in name only.

Stephen M. Walt. Foreign Policy, 16 November 2009.
http://defensealt.org/Hc15bY

Editor’s Comment

Walt makes a fundamental strategic point. The Bush wars involved operational and grand strategic errors, so why institutionalize a shift in defense planning that in effect has the U.S. military prepare for more strategic errors by our leadership? Why not opt to correct the error? It is really an elemental point of strategy: Don’t compound error!

I understand how military professionals who have been ordered to take on foolish strategic missions might feel that counterinsurgency theory is an attractive way out of their tactical and operational dilemmas. But there is really no excuse for civilian leaders, including Sec Def Gates, chasing the mirage of COIN as if it were an answer for our current problems dealing with the consequences of a disastrous Bush national security strategy. Change the strategy and there will be no need for investments in COIN!

Christopher Drew. New York Times, 14 November 2009.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/us/politics/15cost.html

Excerpt:

…even if Mr. Obama opts for a lower troop commitment, Afghanistan’s new costs could wash out the projected $26 billion expected to be saved in 2010 from withdrawing troops from Iraq. And the overall military budget could rise to as much as $734 billion, or 10 percent more than the peak of $667 billion under the Bush administration.

David Rogers. Politico, 10 November 2009.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1109/29357.html

Excerpts:

Under almost all scenarios before Obama, billions more than the contingency funds requested in his 2010 budget will be needed…

Most estimates of how much more the Pentagon may need now run in the range of $30 billion to $40 billion.

Nir Rosen. Boston Review, November/December 2009.
http://www.bostonreview.net/BR34.6/rosen.php

Excerpt:

After the March 2008 Charge of the Knights, when Shias in Iraqi security forces began to fight Shia militias, there was no longer a Shia bloc. This opened up the possibility of cross-sectarian alliances between Shia and Sunni nationalists, all opposed to the occupation. Maliki’s decision to target unruly Shia militias was one of the most important factors ensuring the civil war territorial gains would hold, and the reduction in gang and militia violence would continue. Sunnis suddenly changed their minds about the Prime Minister and started supporting him.

Alissa J. Rubin. New York Times. 31 October 2009.
http://defensealt.org/HKHukc

Gian P. Gentile. New York Times, 31 October 2009.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/31/opinion/31iht-edgentile.html?_r=1

Excerpt:

History shows that occupation by foreign armies with the intent of changing occupied societies does not work and ends up costing considerable blood and treasure.

The notion that if only an army gets a few more troops, with different and better generals, then within a few years it can defeat a multi-faceted insurgency set in the middle of civil war, is not supported by an honest reading of history.

Algeria, Vietnam and Iraq show this to be the case.