Is We Learning?

While driving home from work last night, I listened to an interview with Thomas E. Ricks, whose new book, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, is a no-holds barred critique of the Bush administration's conduct of the war in Iraq. Was I listening to Air America? No. Then it must have been National Public Radio, right? Wrong again.

Instead, it was that partisan hack, that toady of the Bush administration, that unapologetic Christianist with ideological blinders Hugh Hewitt who was interviewing Ricks in a probing, yet respectful manner. Imagine that.

I had also caught Ricks on C-Span about a week ago and his criticism of the military effort in Iraq is both searing and disturbing. He raises serious doubts about whether we are indeed on a path to eventual victory.

The thesis of the book, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam, is that the key reason that the British Army succeeded in their counter-insurgency campaign in Malaya, while the U.S. Army failed in its similar effort in Vietnam, was that the British Army was a learning organization while the American Army was not.

One would hope that the Coalition forces, particularly those of the United States, currently engaged in the counter-insurgency struggle in Iraq would, like the British in Malaya, be constantly learning, with their strategies and tactics constantly evolving as they gain experience. While there are some signs that suggest this is occurring, there are also troubling reports that cast doubt on whether everyone involved really "gets it."

When Ricks was on C-Span, he opined that a third of US commanders in Iraq did indeed "get" counter-insurgency and were effective in their efforts. Another third grasped the concepts, but did not have the resources at their disposal to effective implement them and the remaining third didn't understand counter-insurgency at all.

It reminded me of the conflicting approaches of Colonel Payne and Colonel Pasquarette described in a disquieting article that appeared in the Wall Street Journal earlier this summer:

This sprawling military base is divided down the middle by massive concrete barriers, a snaking fence and rifle-toting guards. On one side, about 10,000 U.S. Army soldiers live in air-conditioned trailers. There's a movie theater, a swimming pool, a Taco Bell, and a post exchange the size of a Wal-Mart, stocked with everything from deodorant to DVD players.

On the other side are a similar number of Iraqi soldiers whose success will determine when U.S. troops can go home. The Iraqi troops live in fetid barracks built by the British in the 1920s, ration the fuel they use to run their lights and sometimes eat spoiled food that makes them sick.

The only soldiers who pass regularly between the two worlds are about 130 U.S. Army advisers, who live, train and work with the Iraqis.

For many of these advisers, the past six months have been a disorienting experience, putting them at odds with their fellow U.S. soldiers and eroding their confidence in the U.S. government's ability to build an Iraqi force that can stabilize this increasingly violent country.

Army commanders back in the U.S. "told us this was going to be the most thankless and frustrating job we have ever held, and boy, were they right," says Lt. Col. Charles Payne, who until last month oversaw about 50 Army advisers.

He and fellow advisers say U.S. troops on the American side of the base saddle Iraqis with the least-desirable missions and often fail to provide them with the basics they need to protect themselves against insurgent attacks. "They treat the Iraqis with utter scorn and contempt," Col. Payne says. "The Iraqis may not be sophisticated, but they aren't stupid. They see it."

Col. James Pasquarette, who commands most of the soldiers on the U.S. side of Camp Taji, calls those claims "totally ridiculous." He says he's proud of what the Iraqi units have achieved in the region and has made supporting them his top priority, after ensuring his own troops have the protection they need. But he worries that if the Iraqis are given too much latitude to execute challenging missions too quickly, they will alienate Iraqi civilians with heavy-handed tactics.

He says Col. Payne and his fellow advisers have "gone native."

Being accused of "going native" while fighting a counter-insurgency campaign should be considered a compliment.

In late May, Col. Payne began to push the Iraqi soldiers to get out on the offensive. "I am sick of sitting around and waiting to get attacked," Col. Payne told Col. Saad. He asked Col. Saad to cut loose 10 or 15 soldiers that he could pair up with three or four U.S. soldiers to venture out at night in search of the enemy. Col. Saad agreed.

On May 19, soldiers from Col. Payne's and Col. Saad's units set out on their second night patrol. After they stopped a car that was out in violation of curfew, the enemy opened fire on them from a surrounding palm grove. The soldiers fired back, killing three insurgents and dispersing the rest. When the shooting ended, a man stumbled out of a small shack deep in the palm grove. His hands were tied and a blindfold hung around his neck. "Come mister. I am problem," he sobbed in broken English.

The man said he worked as a legal adviser for Iraq's Ministry of Defense and had been kidnapped by men who told him they would slaughter him "like a sheep." The kidnappers were setting up a camera to film his execution, he said, when they heard the soldiers and left him. "God sent you to save me," the man said, as tears streamed down his face.

Col. Payne was elated. "The Iraqi army saved a life. It also demonstrated that it will go into the field to find and destroy the enemy," he said.

His victory, however, quickly gave way to crushing defeat. The next day, he was summoned to meet with his immediate supervisor. Col. Payne was relieved of his command and told to move to a headquarters position in Baghdad.

He says he was told that he removed because he was "ineffective" and "lacked the skills necessary to lead [his] team in this challenging environment." An Army spokesman in Baghdad said Col. Payne wasn't relieved for any single incident. He declined to comment further.

A few days before Col. Payne was fired, Col. Pasquarette said in an interview that he thought Col. Payne and his men had grown too close to the Iraqis they were advising and his decisions were too often guided by emotion. "From my perspective, the move was warranted," Col. Pasquarette wrote in an email after Col. Payne was dismissed.

The morning after he was fired, Col. Payne spent the day saying goodbye to Col. Saad and the U.S. soldiers on his team. That evening, he boarded a helicopter for Camp Victory, a massive U.S. base on the outskirts of Baghdad.

"I'm now here in Victory--an alien environment to me and one I never wanted to be a part of," he wrote in an email. He was able to hold his emotions in check until his helicopter lifted off from Camp Taji. Then, he says, he began to sob. "I simply cannot tell you how much I will miss my team."

Stories such as this and Ricks' book do not inspire confidence that the military is learning in Iraq or at least that it's not learning fast enough.