Iraq

John McCreary of NightWatch fame answers my question of yesterday about what the Saudi bombing in Yemen (and the Israeli arms interception near Cyprus) might mean:

The significance is that Saudi Arabia is now engaged in counter-insurgency operations.  Tallying the score in the Middle East-south Asian region during the past five years, a Shiite government is in Baghdad, replacing a secular government, but violence is down for now. 

The Taliban in Afghanistan now operate in more than 220 of the 400 districts in Afghanistan, compared to fewer than 30 five years ago. A new Pakistani Taliban movement has sustained insurgency in the Pakistan border regions and spread terror east of the Indus River boundary and threatened to carry it to India.

Iran and North Korea have continued to proliferate weapons of mass destruction and their delivery systems. Lebanon has no government. Most Central Asian states have returned to the Russian fold. Western China has become less stable and more unpredictable. Yemen is fighting a low level civil war that has now required Saudi Arabian air force assistance. Iran continues to send arms to its proxies in Lebanon, Gaza, Sudan, Eritrea and Somalia. New Iranian made rockets now held by Hamas in Gaza can reach Tel Aviv, and maybe Dimona. Iran's nuclear program continues to expand.

The tally does not look like progress towards stability."

garlandcannon/Flickr

In the new issue of the New York Review of Books, Joost Hilterman of the International Crisis Group offers a good summary of why he thinks the coming year will be a turbulent one in Iraq. I think he is right -- and that 2010 will stand alongside 2003 and 2007 as a turning point. In short,

...just as Odierno will be pulling out his first combat brigades, starting in March, Iraq will be entering into a period of fractious wrangling over the formation of a new government. If Iraqi national forces fail to impose their control, an absence of political leadership could thus coincide with a collapse in security; if politicians and their allied militias resort to violence, the state, including its intelligence apparatus so critical for maintaining internal stability, could fracture along political, ethnic, and sectarian lines."

Fasten your seat belts. Meanwhile, here is a bunch of headlines from this morning:

• Bomb wounds 4 civilians in Baghdad
  November 4, 2009 - 10:37:30

• 4 wounded in 3rd explosion in Baghdad
  November 4, 2009 - 09:03:50

• 2nd sticky bomb in Baghdad wounds 5 people
  November 4, 2009 - 08:22:02

• 3 wanted men nabbed in Wassit
  November 4, 2009 - 08:07:17

• Sticky bomb injures 7 people in western Baghdad
  November 4, 2009 - 07:33:56

Bfelice/flickr

One of the most interesting sub-genres of journalism is the article reporters write as they leave a country or beat. Often, they vent feelings and views they've kept pent-up for year.

Here is a classic of the type. As she leaves Iraq, Alissa Rubin of the New York Times summarizes the harsh lessons she learned from years of living in Baghdad:

. . . Army checkpoints -- legal ones -- are the only ones that stop you, but huge posters of Imam Ali punctuate the streets, a signal that this is now Shiite-land. Imam Ali is revered as a founder of the Shiite branch of Islam, but a poster of him is also a silent rebuke to Sunnis, a way of marking territory, of reminding them that the Shiites run things now. It is a sign of victory as much as peace.

And victory in Iraq almost always begets revenge.

In my five years in Iraq, all that I wanted to believe in was gunned down. Sunnis and Shiites each committed horrific crimes, and the Kurds, whose modern-looking cities and Western ways seemed at first so familiar, turned out to be capable of their own brutality."

I think this is a good prism through which to view Iraq's upcoming national elections.

Photo: ALI YESSEF/AFP/Getty Images

I often find RAND Corp. reports mediocre, usually just telling the military establishment what it wants to hear. But a new one that surveys the population of Iraq's al Anbar province caught my eye. It notes, among other things, that 40 percent of 20 year olds have lost their fathers. "The coming of age of large numbers of fatherless young men in a society that puts a premium on revenge is a highly worrisome development for a region emerging from civil war," it warns. Even worse, nearly half of all households reporting losing at least one member to violence. 

The U.S. Army/flickr

This new movie is about the good old days of Iraq, about seven years ago, when the Americans were too busy fighting each other there to acknowledge the rise of the insurgency. I'd love to see a movie break the "Iraq jinx," and maybe this will be the one.

ifitsmovies/flickr

With the latest round of bombings, I've got no lectures, no insights, no smart comments. Anthony Shadid, one of the best reporters on Iraqi politics, worries that it portends badly for the national elections early next year. I have only sympathy for the people of Iraq, the average citizens trying to care for their families. What a nightmare.

AHMAD AL-RUBAYE/AFP/Getty Images

Here's a comment from Lt. Col. Chris Coglianese, a smart infantryman currently serving in Baghdad as XO of the 1st Cavalry Division's special troops battalion. I am of course posting it with his permission. One definition of moral courage: Putting your name behind what you say on my blog! 

I think experience in both 'heavy' and 'light' assignments (back in peacetime) gave different proclivities that are helpful in ‘this kind of war.' Light guys have to think in micro-detail and are probably just a bit more tuned into human factors. They will tend to have a better appreciation of the insurgent's tactical capabilities, because the insurgent is a light formation. They understand retail logistics.  Heavy guys think broad and deep and have to be able to cycle the OODA loop fast (I am oversimplifying the OODA Loop for purposes of making a point). They understand a lot of moving parts simultaneously, some very fast, over a big sweep of terrain (or battlespace or whatever). They understand bulk, wholesale logistics.

I say this as a guy who served in  the "key developmental" positions throughout my career as a mechanized infantry platoon leader, cavalry scout platoon leader, air assault rifle company commander, combined arms battalion S3 (attached to a light brigade in combat) and XO, and division special troops battalion XO. I have also served on Air Assault Brigade, Garrison and heavy Division Staffs plus advised our National Guard. All that shows is that I can't hold a job.

Truth be told today, at least in Iraq, everyone is motorized and has been for awhile (especially in the urban centers).

But ultimately, if you rely on personal experiences only, you are very likely to fail. That is why I get nervous when I read people hoisting forth all their deployment-combat experience. Ingrained, active, and reflected-on experience (much different than ‘saltiness' or just being there) in conjunction with learned study and training is what will give a guy (or gal) the highest probability of success in future operations. As the saying goes ... Frederick the Great's horse was on seven campaigns, but at the end of it all he was still a horse.  What was very acceptable in OIF II in Baghdad, could probably set off a civil war in Basra in OIF 09-10. Guys will fall back on what worked for them in the past (fortunately, our enemies have this fault also). 

There will be the very rare guy who will just be able to do it intuitively (maybe a guy who was from a very ethnic urban working-class neighborhood, who had experience/major interest in gangs and or criminal networks), but really look at the backgrounds of GEN Petraeus, GEN McChrystal, MG Bolger, BG McMaster, and BG MacFarland among others who have an established record of excellence in this war. Their success is not by accident. It is from relentless preparation over a career. (Raw talent does count, also. We are not all created with equal ability.) They have had broadening experiences as graduate students and instructors or as fellows and are known to have vast and substantial personal libraries (predominantly, but assuredly not completely, of military and strategic topics) and be of rarefied intellectual capability (today, my Division Chief of Staff and I were just talking about GEN McChrystal, whom he knows, and his almost impossible to imagine intellectual horsepower). 

I think that's a very good summary of the best practices of officership.

Also, Starbuck, who has no dog in the fight, being an Army aviator, rounds up the literature on the subject.

Photo via Flickr user mashleymorgan

Over the weekend, someone dynamited the bridge outside Ramadi on the main highway that goes from Baghdad west to Jordan and Syria. There also were two bombings in Fallujah, one killing 11 Iraqi soldiers, the other taking down an Iraqi officer's house. Also 14 people were killed in the bombing of a mosque in Tell Afar. This is all so 2004.

AFP/Getty Images