Insha'Allah (interview with an IA advisor, Capt. Eric Navarro)

The Washington Post ^ | 6/7/08 | Phil Carter

[Dawnsblood]

In 2005, President Bush articulated a national strategy for Iraq that hinged on successfully advising Iraqi security forces. "As Iraqis stand up, we will stand down," he said.

The critical piece of this strategy was the adviser capability itself. Although the military's special operations community had long nurtured the capability to conduct "foreign internal defense," the Army and Marine Corps had largely marginalized this capability by the time of the Iraq war, disdaining it in favor of conventional combat operations. To achieve the president's vision for Iraq, the Army and Marines would need to build this capability from scratch, tearing officers and sergeants out of their existing combat units, assigning them to newly created adviser teams,and embedding them with Iraqi army, police and headquarters units.

In God Willing, Marine Corps Reserve Capt. Eric Navarro tells his story of serving on one of these teams, as an adviser to the Iraqi Army's battalion in the then-violent Anbar province in Western Iraq. Through graphic and colorful stories, Navarro relates the daily struggles of his adviser team, from training his Iraqi officer counterparts to be leaders to figuring out how to feed and house an Iraqi infantry company.

Having served as an embedded adviser with Iraq's police, I could relate to many of his stories, especially his tale of frustration illustrating the difference between command and influence (advisers generally exercise only the latter). Before I deployed, I read everything I could find on combat advising, The Village, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, and A Bright Shining Lie, trying to learn as much as I could to help me climb the steep learning curve of a combat adviser. Navarro's book joins this library of knowledge about combat advising and should be on the pre-deployment reading list for anyone heading to Iraq to do this job.

[Dawnsblood]

Be sure to read the whole thing. He explains everything from training issues to tribal culture. Excellent interview. I have not read the book yet though.

[flowerplough]

Insha Allah: if they miss the target, it wasn't because they were poorly trained or did not practice enough. It was "Insha Allah". God did not want them to hit the target. Well, how do you then construct a modern fighting force out of something some people that hold that as their basic tenet and basic organizing principle?

How do you then construct a modern fighting force out of something some people that hold that as their basic tenet and basic organizing principle?

You don't. I was disappointed when I first heard Paul Harvey say it, but I now agree with him that the fundamentalist, tribal Arab Muslim is probably neither ready for nor capable of any modern, elected, representative government. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfield, and I all greatly mis-overestimated Haji. We may be able to keep Iraq quiet for a spell, but those people won't "grow up" for decades, or maybe centuries.

Oxymorons: Government efficiency, military intelligence, and Middle Eastern democracy.