Excerpt from Chapter 1

Most of the rhetoric about the war in Iraq focuses on the political issues that seem to prevent decisive victory. President George W. Bush’s choice to send an additional 30,000 troops, the much heralded release of the Iraq Study Group report, and the “changing-of-the-guard” from the top of the Department of Defense to the senior generals directing the war effort that all occurred through the summer of 2007, are changes that point to the primacy of belief that political issues are the reason decisive victory is unattained.

Most Americans applaud the efforts of our military and point to the political failings as the causal factor detracting from the United States’ ability to win decisively. While I assert this is true in large measure, the other quite unconsidered and rarely spoken causal factor is that the Army and Marine Corps are improperly trained for counterinsurgent warfare and wrongly configured to meet the complex challenges posed by the enemy in Iraq.

What is undeniably true about the Army and Marine Corps fighting this war in Iraq are that both services possess the mid-level leadership and ideological commitment to make needed changes within the forces; however, the time and effort considered necessary to institutionalize the changes through senior political and military leadership may prevent ultimate success in Iraq. Worse, the slow pace of change may adversely impact near-term future conflicts facing America. Additionally, the military has been poorly led at the very top echelons of command and staff to fight this kind of war and indeed the so-called “global war on terror.” General Petraeus’ elevation to senior commander has positively changed the leader dynamic in Iraq. Still, issues of leadership and advice abound at the next higher echelon.

I offer my experience as evidence that the Army’s efforts for four years did little more than patch together its conventional forces to prosecute a counterinsurgent war without regard to a coherent doctrine or operational continuity to achieve the strategic objectives set forth by the National Command Authority. This problem coupled with an institutional lack of ability to properly prepare units and soldiers to optimally operate in Iraq, an inability at the top political and military level to clearly define the nature of the conflict at the outset, and no apparent military senior leader understanding of how to link tactics, operations, and strategy in a coherent manner with high fidelity and continuity have done more to adversely affect this nation’s ability to decisively win the war in Iraq than anything else. In short, suspect generalship has significantly hindered the military effort in Iraq.

By March 2004, when the First Cavalry Division arrived in Baghdad, the insurgency in Iraq had taken root right under the noses of the Coalition military units that executed the initial attack. Several factors, I contend, contributed materially to this negative development:

1) Poor political decisions by the Coalition Provisional Authority disbanding the Iraqi Army, disenfranchising the Ba’ath officer corps, and instituting policies that disregarded cultural norms and tribal issues were seminal in creating the political conditions fostering an insurgency.

2) A delusional belief on the part of senior political leaders in the Bush Administration that Iraqis would welcome with open arms the American military allowed for a mindset that dismissed critical military planning decisions. Undeniably, there is a proven science to military operational planning and by all rational analysis of the plan to invade Iraq it is clear that plan was grossly flawed. The plan severely limited troop strength vital to effectively consolidate the strategic objective, it failed to provide critical civil support resources, and the plan failed to connect the American political and military efforts in a synchronized, complementary manner. Even more, the plan did nothing to secure the borders and seal the problems of Iraq inside Iraq.

3) The Iraqi people were severely oppressed for 30 years under Saddam and his despotic regime. The deep-seated social complexities of this history were unaccounted for in the calculus by civil and military leaders charged with the responsibility of executing the operation that would become the war in Iraq. The military was not fashioned or ready to handle the challenges this history has presented. With the gross inability to communicate in Arabic and the insidious culture clash that is part of the reality of operating in Iraq, the U.S. military is unfortunately not suited to win decisively in Iraq. Success is only achieved through the building of relationships and the investment of time; time that the political realities of the American democracy do not allow for nurturing. Senior military leaders are inept at assimilating and retooling the force quickly enough to adapt and steal victory from the jaws of strategic political defeat because they just don’t know how to fight this kind of war with the tools provided.

To fight in Iraq, I, along with many of my peers in the First Cavalry Division and throughout the rest of the Army, had to profoundly transform our units to meet the unanticipated demands of fighting a counterinsurgency war in Iraq. I was commanding a rocket artillery battalion. We were trained, outfitted, and fully resourced to move rocket artillery around on a wide open, maneuver-oriented battlefield and fire deep into enemy territory destroying key enemy targets. We would do none of that in Iraq. I was commanding a battalion in an unsuited Army heading into the cauldron of a burgeoning insurgency war. An active duty Lieutenant Colonel of Field Artillery assigned as Commander of 1-21 Field Artillery in the First Cavalry Division, I found myself leading a rocket artillery battalion headed to Baghdad, Iraq.

Many personal emotions surged through me as I pondered the near future for the battalion. War is daunting enough to contemplate without the added burden of knowing the battalion was unsuited to fight in a counterinsurgent method given its existing configuration. Having to fundamentally change the operational structure and basic function of an entire Army battalion as part of the preparation process was intimidating. Understanding this reality is central to understanding the way America is fighting the war in Iraq.