10 Lessons From Iraq (NSR- Duh)
Got this from another bb I post at, thought it was interesting. It is primarily about military doctrine so I wouldn't get tooooooo hot and heavy on the political side of the equation.
sorry about formatting, lazy.
A Grave New World
10 lessons from the war in Iraq
By Ralph Peters
Drawing rigid lessons from the military experience of the moment is foolhardy. The human capacity for mischief plays havoc with doctrinaireanalysis. Yet, our military establishment and, especially, its civilian leadership fell prey to a worse temptation: Clinging to a vision of war as they wished it to be, while the dimensions of conflict changed in ways that mocked their cherished plans.
We need to be wary, but we can't refuse to learn. We must do our best to harvest the enduring lessons from our recent military campaigns, while winnowing out the case-specific issues. Thereafter, we must be merciless in amending our doctrine, our procurement programs, our force structure and, above all, our mentality - if we are to lessen our risks in the grave, new world around us.
Ten lessons from Iraq seem incontestable:
1. Technology still can't win wars by itself. Does anyone remember "shockand awe," the farcical concept deskbound theorists sold to civilian Pentagon cadres who lacked military experience? The air campaign that was supposed to defeat Saddam Hussein's regime overnight and prove that ground forces were obsolescent (if not obsolete) was a contractor's fantasy that rapidly became a decision-maker's embarrassment.
Nothing worked as planned. Hundreds of billions of dollars worth of hardware couldn't persuade a determined opponent to quit. An enemy whose mentality had not even been considered shrugged off our sound-and-light show.
We found that precision weaponry, for all its virtues, could be too precise, failing to inflict sufficient pain to create an atmosphere of catastrophic defeat. We preened about "network-centric warfare," but its proven masters aren't our service technocrats. The innovators have been the ragtag terrorists who exploited the internet, cell phones and the global media far more effectively than we performed with extravagant, irrelevant technologies.
2. Land warfare still demands ground troops. The paradox of the high-tech 21st century is that the security problems we face are overwhelmingly of flesh and blood, arisen from a rage of souls in failing civilizations. And it still takes human beings to solve human problems - especially duringconflicts in that most daunting of human creations, the city.
Soldiers and Marines, grudgingly marshaled in theater, had to win Operation Iraqi Freedom the old-fashioned way, fighting along road and river lines, through sandstorms and ambushes, then climaxing the land campaign with bold thrusts into Baghdad. They proved, yet again, that muscle and mind still trump metal and microchips. And in counterinsurgency efforts, technology plays a useful, but distinctly secondary role.
3. We need those ground troops in sufficient numbers. Mass is back. Calculating how cheaply military operations can be conducted simply makes them less likely to succeed. Numbers still matter, so if you got 'em, use 'em. Our Army and Marine Corps are too small for our inescapable globalroles. Yet, Iraqi Freedom was supposed to pave the way to a cut of two to three Army divisions. Now the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) is struggling to prevent a temporary (and still far from adequate) increase of 30,000 in Army end strength from becoming permanent - in order to preservefunding for Cold War legacy systems. OSD's first loyalties appear to be to the defense industry, rather than to our national defense.
4. Speed is the dominant battlefield requirement. In the 1980s, officers spoke of "operating inside the enemy's decision cycle." Today, our forces must "operate inside the media cycle."
The hostile global media, led by al-Jazeera, won the First Battle of Fallujah. Our Marines did everything expertly and by the book. But the book called for deliberate urban operations, which gave the media time to muster world opinion against us and break the nerve of key leaders.
We won the Second Battle of Fallujah because we used overwhelming force, we didn't shirk from doing what was necessary - and we did it fast. The full-bore operation was over in less than a week.
Our armed forces will never again face a single opponent on any battleground. We will always be confronted with a third "combatant" at whom we can't return fire: the media. The only way to win is to speed the kill.
> 5. The enemy must be convinced of his defeat. Because we deployed
> too small
> a force to Iraq, the ground campaign that brought us Baghdad
> failed to
> result in a conclusive victory. The Sunni-Arab heartlands of Iraq -
> the
> source of support for Saddam Hussein's regime - never felt the
> agony of war.
> Many a Sunni-Arab town or city hardly saw an American soldier or
> Marine for
> months after we believed we had won decisively.
>
> Our enemy didn't feel defeated. He felt tricked, betrayed and shamed.
> Compounding our problems, we worried not only about friendly
> casualties, but
> about enemy casualties during combat operations - we didn't want
> to hurt
> Iraqi feelings. As a result, our technical knockout fostered the
> rise of a
> resistance.
>
> The enemy who doesn't suffer may raise his hands above his head,
> but he
> won't surrender in his heart. Our enemies and their supporters
> must be
> broken down to a sense of utter hopelessness.
>
