Shifting Focus

Another new strategy:

Under the plan developed by Chiarelli's staff, the military would shift about half of its 15 combat brigades away from battling insurgents and sectarian violence and into training Iraqi security forces as soon as the spring of 2007, military and defense officials said. In northern and western Iraq, U.S. commanders are already moving troops out of combat missions to place them as advisers with lower-level Iraqi army units, Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, spokesman for the military in Iraq, said yesterday at a briefing in Baghdad.

I wonder what this even means. It doesn't seem to me that our typical rank-and-file soldiers are especially trained or qualified to act as trainers of Iraqi security forces. They don't for example, speak Arabic, and I would imagine that being embedded with a group of heavily armed men whose language you can't speak would be sort of unpleasant.

But more to the point, what's the problem that additional training is supposed to address? Hearing proposals like these you would believe that there are two sides in Iraq, the Good Guys and the Bad Guys and that the main problem is that the Bad Guys have a top-notch military academy at their disposal whereas the Good Guys do not. But that's not the situation at all. Various armed groups seem to be able to fight reasonably effectively without the benefit of American training. At the same time, giving the Iraqi Army more intensive drill-instruction isn't going to change the basic lack of legitimate national institutions for people to be loyal to.

Comments

Also, it doesn't change the fact that the military and police are heavily infiltrated by various militias, and that we could easily wind up training both sides of the civil war.

Posted by Eric | December 14, 2006 10:10 AM

At the same time, giving the Iraqi Army more intensive drill-instruction isn't going to change the basic lack of legitimate national institutions for people to be loyal to.

Unlike in the US (and the West generally), often in developing countries, the Army is an institution that is loyal to itself and its own idea of the country. It is not particularly loyal to any particular government or other institution. That's what you've seen for a long time in, for example, Turkey. And, I think, it is what you might see in Iraq also. It's not a particularly democratic idea, but I think it probably often works pretty well.

The idea that the Army is an institution that needs to be loyal to other national institutions shows Matthew's West-centric view of things.

Posted by Al | December 14, 2006 10:22 AM

You're still thinking that the goal is to actually succeed. Whereas
the true goal of the US political elite is merely to get Iraq off
the front page of the newspapers. And the hope is that training a
larger better Iraqi Army will allow us to bring home a few troops,
and reduce the US casualty rate. "3 US dead" is page 1 news; "30
Iraqi dead" isn't.

With the questionable loyalties of many of the recruits, the plan
probably isn't going to succeed even on those cynical terms: small
groups of American "advisers" are going to be betrayed, deserted, or
simply fragged by Iraqi units quite often.

Posted by Richard Cownie | December 14, 2006 10:23 AM

Maybe the idea is that our troops will be embedded with them to keep tabs on, and even police, their behavour. It seems like a pretty dangerous assignment for our troops, and could potentially really backfire. How many fragging incidents will it take before we call it off?

Posted by Jim W | December 14, 2006 10:25 AM

Various armed groups seem to be able to fight reasonably effectively without the benefit of American training.

Well, that's because right now all of the various armed groups are trained to the same extent. But if you train one of the groups - call it "the Army" - a lot better than the other groups, it may win. Isn't that the point?

Posted by Al | December 14, 2006 10:26 AM

I think one aspect of the thinking is that training a unit together does give them something to fight for - the unit. When you go through the ordeal of training together, you're willing to go the extra mile with the people you went through it with. If the training is very good, that feeling extends beyond those with whom you went through training to all who went through a similar experience.

I doubt we are achieving that though. As you mentioned, our trainers probably don't speak Arabic. Even those who do, don't have enough of a shared experience with the guys they are training to achieve what we need.

Even if we do train units with good morale and discipline, there is a good chance that they will be effective, disciplined troops carrying out ethnic cleansing and undercutting the authority of the elected government.

Posted by Njorl | December 14, 2006 10:27 AM

Matthew Y:

Maybe it's simply not true.

As Richard Cownie up above points out, the mission is to get this out of the papers.

Posted by brendan | December 14, 2006 10:44 AM

If we are to train Iraqis, we need to train their trainers, not their troops. This is the most efficient method. I see no advantage to having non-Arabic speaking U.S. troops training the security forces. If we cannot train effective trainers, the troops are hopeless.

The downside, of course is that once identified, the trainers' families will probably be killed.

What are the details of this embedding process? How will it specifically solve the problem? If it is so encouraging, why wasn't it done years ago? Was it considered before and rejected? If so, why. If not, why isn't it in place already?

Posted by Mudge | December 14, 2006 10:55 AM

often in developing countries, the Army is an institution that is loyal to itself and its own idea of the country. It is not particularly loyal to any particular government or other institution. That's what you've seen for a long time in, for example, Turkey.

The Turkish Army's avowed role is to defend Turkey's secular constitution. I can't think of another army whose officers all take an oath to preserve, protect and defend their country's constitution... no, wait... yes, I can.

(If I wanted to be rude I could say that at least the Turkish Army actually acts to defend the constitution from time to time, rather than just standing by while some idiot urinates all over it.)

Posted by ajay | December 14, 2006 11:02 AM

It would seem that embedding our soldiers in with other troops demands that we have faith in the commanders of those units. Do we actually have that degree of information about the loyalties of the commanders?

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | December 14, 2006 11:23 AM

The lack of language skills on the part of our soldiers raises another question. Are there enough translators to embed with the American adviser in EVERY unit in Iraq? Are there enough of these who are willing to work with the government AND courageous enough to deploy with the army?

Posted by Scott Ferguson | December 14, 2006 12:45 PM

'don't speak Arabic'

True enough. But what are the military choices? We can emphasize fighting but there is no visible enemy - the opponents are operating by stealth and terror.

Or we can emphasize training the Iraqi forces. Ultimately they have to win or lose on their turf whereas we can leave. Our exit could be humiliating (we don't know until it happens) but it will not be fatal.

Of course we can consult the wise men. What have we heard in the last week or so? Diplomacy? Yep, Iran and Syria sure seem likely to stablize the area and help. Stout-hearted Saudi Arabia to counterbalance Iran? Sure! LMAO about that.

We must back the Iraqis who have signed on with us or leave. There won't be any magic lozenge to make it all OK.

Posted by K | December 14, 2006 1:00 PM

The language problem is ameliorated by having bilingual Iraqi trainers whoare nominally in control of the units and understand the nuances of what is needed.

I am still unclear of the objective. If the objective is the development of nationalistic Iraqi forces that protect civilians from anti-government brigands, is this the way to accomplish that? If the objective is to train a capable militia, then it should be possible as long as we equip them. Will we equip Iraqi units such that they can feel safe in the field although they would be be capable of changing allegiances to teh detriment of what we perceive to be Iraq?

One of the complaints I have seen from teh Iraqis is that their equipment is substandard and much more likely to be breached by launched grenades and IEDs. Do we equip imbedded, non_Arabic fluent GIs with the best protection we have and let their trainees suffer with obsolete equipment? Do we let our GIs use obsolete equipment to show solidarity with the Iraqi troops? Of course not. I'm not sure either is a recipe for success. I haven't sen anyone mention the cost of outfitting the Iqaqi security forces to modern levels.

There goes that devil in the details again.

Posted by Mudge | December 14, 2006 2:38 PM

Even aside from language problems, by now I think the only "emotional bond" between most American troops and and most Iraqi "volunteers" is deep mutual loathing and extreme distrust. Somehow I doubt that the only thing preventing the Iraqis from becoming our Gurkhas is insufficient quality time together.

Of course, nowadays "strategy" seems to be synonomous with "press release" or "diversion", so it probably doesn't even make much sense to take this particular disinfo op too seriously.....

Posted by sglover | December 14, 2006 3:48 PM

For those of us who actually remember the 60's, this is all very familiar. The problem in Vietnam was that the S.V. Governement was corrupt and that ARVN was never loyal. However, even so , there were some loyal units there. Are there really ANY units in Iraq that are loyal to anybody other than their specific sect ? Surely, NOBODY dares trust the present "government"!

Posted by M. Caret | December 14, 2006 4:19 PM

After all why is USA messing up with those inocent creaturs?
I don't get it and i hope it is bizzar to the rest of the world too. Just because one has a resource it doesn't mean should pay the price by suffuring! Which is exactly what the US is doing now. Mr. Bush and his followers, please Let alone the iraques and the rest of the world and just mind your bussiness, millions of US citizens are living in poverty help them instead of pointing your nose where don't concern you and making others life misirable.

Posted by Arsema | May 23, 2007 2:07 AM