Posted on 03/19/2006 7:37:30 AM PST by 68skylark
More on Operation Swarmer.
From the AP:
Troops rounded up dozens more suspected insurgents today, including the alleged killers of an Iraqi television journalist. ... Also, police there say they have captured a Sunni extremist who confessed to leading a gang that killed hundreds of Shiites in recent months.
Washington Post, Fighting Smarter in Iraq
Three years on, the U.S. military is finally becoming adept at fighting a counterinsurgency war in Iraq. Sadly, these are precisely the skills that should have been mastered before America launched its invasion in March 2003. It may prove one of the costliest lessons in the history of modern warfare.
I had a chance to see the new counterinsurgency doctrine in practice here this week. U.S. troops are handing off to the Iraqi army a growing share of the security burden. As the Iraqis step up, the Americans are stepping back into a training and advisory role. This is the way it should have happened from the beginning.
ABC News: US says raid shows Iraqi army taking control
The U.S. military said on Friday a joint U.S.-Iraqi offensive marked a change in the fight against guerillas, showing Iraq's army was becoming increasingly effective and taking more control. U.S. troop withdrawals from Iraq hinge on the capability of the Iraqi army, disbanded by U.S. authorities in 2003 and now being rapidly rebuilt, in the face of a raging insurgency and a surge in sectarian killings.
BBC: How US assault grabbed global attention
In what was clearly a combing operation using cordon-and-search tactics in a patch of remote desert terrain with scattered farms and homesteads, military spokesmen said the advancing forces uncovered six caches containing arms, explosives and other insurgent material. They detained 48 people, of whom 17 were freed without delay. Officials said they did not believe they had captured any significant insurgent leaders. "Any leaders there must have seen the forces coming, and escaped," said one senior Iraqi security source.
The US is not "finally becoming adept" at fighting in Iraq so much as reaping the result of a two pronged strategy. First, building up indigenous and de-Baathized forces (with a large Shi'ite and Kurdish component) and second, destroying the infrastructure of the insurgency. The extent of the Iraqi troop buildup can be seen in the CENTCOM 2006 posture statement.
The most significant change in terms of troop levels in 2005 was the number of trained and equipped Iraqi Security Forces (ISF). In January 2005, there were 127,000 total Ministry of Defense and Ministry of Interior security forces, or 78 battalions. About a year later, there were approximately 231,000 combined security forces constituting more than 160 battalions. More important, these increasingly capable Iraqi forces are assuming greater responsibility for combating the insurgency. ...
This past year, U.S. and Coalition forces in Iraq focused on: training, building, and conducting operations with capable Iraqi security forces; providing the shield behind which political and economic progress can continue and legitimate government institutions can form and take root; and killing and capturing terrorists and neutralizing the insurgency.
The campaign contained a significant political component as well. Again, from the CENTCOM 2006 posture statement.
The political component is decisive. ... The political accomplishments of the Iraqi people during 2005 were remarkable. Iraqi citizens, by the millions, braved threats of violence to vote for an interim government in January 2005. These elected representatives formed an interim government and ministries, and crafted a constitution, which was approved by the Iraqi people in a national referendum. Then in December over 10 million Iraqis voted again to elect a permanent government. All of these political milestones were set out in the Transitional Administrative Law, demonstrating that the rule of law is beginning to take hold in Iraq. When compared to our own political experience in forming a new republic, Iraq’s political progress in 2005 is impressive.
Just how impressive the bumbling, unsophisticated effort in Iraq is will be evident when compared to the decades-long failure to create a working Palestinian Authority, which till now has no effective and reliable security forces and only a desultory form of "government" despite the efforts of far the more legitimate, understanding and capable United Nations and the sophisticated European Union.
In retrospect three of the decisive weapons of victory in Iraq will have been the 190 military transition teams which raised the new Iraqi Army, the Transitional Administrative Law which made a new coalition government possible, and the US Armed Forces itself, which held up the shield behind which the training and political components could take shape. It now seems fairly clear that many of the 'far better' strategies which were suggested in 2004 and 2005 in place of CENTCOM's may not have been as good as they were made out to be. There were many calls for more American troops on the ground, up to 400,000 men. There were even calls for a return to the draft to rescue a "broken army". It had been suggested that it was a "mistake" to fire the old Saddamite Army, which alone could maintain control, or so it was said. In the end, CENTCOM's strategy did not prove so amateurish after all. If the public has ever heard of the MTTs, the political transition process or the River War it will not be the result of their concealment. These three decisive weapons were lying in plain view from the end 2004 onwards though their significance had not been noted -- their existence hardly even acknowledged -- by the Press even until now. Ironically, this may have contributed to overall success. The enemy in reading the leading newspapers of the West remained ignorant of the doom descending upon their heads, confirmed in their eventual victory even as catastrophe overwhelmed them. Thank you MSM.
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Yeah, I agree with you. I think Wretchard's main point is that the Iraqi Army is getting better and better -- thanks in large part to our help and training, and thanks also to their own skill and bravery.
The press looks down on the U.S. military, which is ironic -- because most Americans have a lot more respect for the skill of their military than for the skill of their lamentable media.
If there's anyone who needs to grow up and get their act together, it isn't the U.S. military.
We do have schools like "Insurgency 101," where they teach skills that are quite different than the skills for so-called "high intensity conflict," or HIC.
Until the last few years, the counter-insurgency classes were mostly given to Special Forces soldiers -- not to those in the "big Army."
That's been changing recently, and we're now seeing good results from the change.
---Just how impressive the bumbling, unsophisticated effort in Iraq is will be evident when compared to the decades-long failure to create a working Palestinian Authority, which till now has no effective and reliable security forces and only a desultory form of "government" despite the efforts of far the more legitimate, understanding and capable United Nations and the sophisticated European Union.---
That's a wrap.
Yeah, that's a great sentence you've highlighted.
I have argued from the beginning that it was 100% correct to de-Baathasize the army---contrary to brilliant "embedded generals." Rummy has been running this exactly right, and had we brought in more men, as some such as McCain wanted, there would be LESS incentive for the Iraqis to take over.
Oh, I totally agree with you. If we had more people on the ground, the MSM (and opportunists like McCain) would never stop whining about how the excessive number of troops was hurting our mission. And they'd be right, too.
Someone once said it's odd how in America, all our most brilliant military geniuses make their living as journalists.
The only way to avoid making mistakes is through experience, the only way to gain experience is by making mistakes.
Sorry, there is no instruction manual for liberating a country that has been under oppresive rule for 35 years, no course in universities called Liberation 101. I think we are doing a spectacular job considering we are writing the manual as we go.
Allegra just fainted from pure shock...
68sl -- Don't take any lessons in bricklaying from those who only want to lay a brick when it is a pure gold brick.
About what should have been done or what works; NOTHING ever even mentioned by Biden, Clark, Murtha or any other Democrat military expert, resembles what is currently proving to be the right strategy, or balance of strategies. We hear the same tired, disproven and illogical criticisms over and over, "We should not have disbanded the Iraqi Army.. etc." Not only did we NOT disband it, we never had a chance to hold it together, as it melted away into the countryside and the population, by design. They are the Baathist dead-enders, that are now winding up dead.
The Iraqi Army was commanded by the very officers that have killed hundreds of thousands of Shiites, Kurds, Marsh Arabs, and plain citizens in the last 30 years. To have followed the foolish advice to NOT reconstruct the Iraqi Army from scratch, would be to simply ask if not invite a Army-wide mutiny at the most opportune time for the insurgency, not to mention constant leaks of information, sabotage, and killings within the Army by officers that remained loyal to the Baathists.
Imagine establishing the Bundeswehr with a core of unreconstructed, un-denazified Waffen SS officers, and you will approach the idiocy of this one constantly repeated "Shoulda done".
If anyone could decipher and analyze the convoluted, contradictory mish mash that Murtha spouted today on Meet the Press, I would love to see it, as to call him incomprehensible would be an understatement.
That was Robert E. Lee, who wondered why all the best generals were running newspapers while all the editors were running the armies. He suggested they trade places.
I have heard several things in the last few days which although they come from the MSM, also seem to make sense. NOTE: My son was with an elite unit in Gulf War 1, Aug. 1990 to April 1991. He is now with an elite unit in Afghanistan.
It is reported that early in the war, Rumsfeld and Franks decided not to send a unit of (7,000 ?) men to Iraq. This was when the gangsterism Sadaam Feedeyen were engaging in guerrilla tactics behind our lines as we raced to Bagdad. A conscious military decision was made to ignore them to our subsequent distress. Those missing troops could have been used against them. We did not stomp on the looting and disorder early and often. Since it was reported before the war started that Sadaam had released nearly 100,000 criminals from jail, our Army should have been prepared with a much larger contingent of policing type units.
The insurgents/terrorists were aware that they needed to stop civil order as they repeatedly bombed recruiting points and freshly trained classes of police and military.
Fortunately, this seems to have angered the Iraqi people, and given the strain of martyrism in the populace did not seem to dampen the enthusiasm for recruitment. Thus we have been able to build up the Iraq Army and the police. Now if we could just tame the militias!
If Allegra has fainted, it MUST be good! :)
I agree with you. Except I'd just quibble and say that the dysfunctional culture in the Middle East has been brewing for 5,000 to 10,000 years or more -- if we can help them make changes in just a few generations we'll be doing great.
(And I'm afraid there are lots of college courses called Liberation 101 -- but as you know, they're all about Marxism, not liberty.)
Only the skill of being snarky.
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