Counterinsurgency Guidelines

from Small Wars Journal: Counterinsurgency Guidance from U.S. forces Iraq, signed by Lieutenant General Ray Odierno.

Ten Key Points:

Secure the people where they sleep.

Population security is our primary mission, one that will take time, and one we must carry out deliberately. Most extra-judicial killings occur at night and in people’s homes…

Give the people justice and honor.

Iraqis value justice and honor. In the counterinsurgency fight, we want the hands that bring security to be the hands that help bring justice and honor as well…

Integrate civilian and military efforts – this is an interagency, combined arms fight.

Embedded Provincial Reconstruction Teams now operate directly alongside many military units, bringing cultural, political, and economic expertise to the tactical commander’s overall counterinsurgency effort…

Get out and walk – move mounted, work dismounted.

Vehicles like the up-armored HMMWV limit our situational awareness and insulate us from the Iraqi people we intend to secure. They also make us predictable, often obliging us to move slowly on established routes. These vehicles offer protection, but they do so at the cost of a great deal of effectiveness…

There are more. And they sound right to me. Particularly that point about up-armored Humvees.

Whether we should have started this thing in Iraq is one issue, for how long we should continue is another issue, but .. as long as we, and if we are, then we do know that we are engaged in counter-insurgency ops, and isolating our people in impenetrable fortresses and vehicles isn’t the solution. But, of course, the “solution” envisaged here, i.e. getting out among the people, means taking more casualties.

Comments

  1. Dreggas wrote:

    It’s another sword of damocles. If my history isn’t fuzzy we faced a similar issue in the Vietnam war in that we didn’t know who the hell we were fighting etc.

    Yes, Yes I made a vietnam reference, shoot me.

    All of these “counter-insurgency” measures should have been taken right after the fall of Baghdad. If we had been moving through the areas, helping people and asserting a real measure of control prior to helping to establish a government in Iraq we may have had a chance.

    However we completely screwed that up as well, see disbanding the army and “de-baathification”. There’s that old saw about an ounce of prevention being worth a pound of cure, well we didn’t do much to prevent this entire castro-****.

    This has nothing to do with the generals, and less to do with the troops because they did exactly what they were ordered to do. This has to do with civies who didn’t know their backsides from a hole in the ground making decisions they were not qualified to be making.

    Posted 18 Jun 2007 at 3:56 pm

  2. BloodSpite wrote:

    The Embassy is semi-understandable.

    I say Semi, because if one considers our last Embassy in a war torn country….say…Beirut anyone?

    On the other hand your right. It creates almost a HP Lovecraft novelesque approach of having the armored protectors from their fortress roaming the streets of the unprotected.

    But, in the big picture is there a way around that?

    I mean really?

    If they de-armor HUMMVEE’s the public outcry would be devastating.

    If by placing more people on the streets, casualties increase the media will be in more of a frenzy than what it is.

    There really is no solution thats going to make everyone happy in this case. A true democratic Catch 22

    Posted 18 Jun 2007 at 5:30 pm

  3. Dreggas wrote:

    Blood,

    Yep, and they painted themselves into this corner which makes it even worse. Now had this been how we operated post-invasion (initially) and had we not sent over a bunch of idiots to take control of the place (the civies) who were only there to make a fast buck and pad a resume, we might be in a different situation today.

    Posted 18 Jun 2007 at 5:45 pm

  4. DavidC wrote:

    All of these “counter-insurgency” measures should have been taken right after the fall of Baghdad.

    Yes. Unfortunately it seems that nobody planned to counter an insurgency. Check out this interview with the former vice-chief of staff of the army. Speaking of prewar planning with General Franks he says, “we never even considered an insurgency as an reasonable option.” Amazing.

    Posted 18 Jun 2007 at 7:51 pm

  5. Theocritus wrote:

    I read in, I believe, The Weekly Standard, that the Iraqi Ministry of Defense is so bureaucratically inept that it has not doled the monies for defense necessary. The Iraqis see us go out, well fortified, which they cannot afford to do, so that we avoid casualties.

    They do not want casualties either but haven’t the materiel that we do, a lot of it owing to its own governmental incompetence, and so they tend to do large raids on large nests, instead of the smaller policing needed.

    Posted 18 Jun 2007 at 9:33 pm

  6. EDK wrote:

    To do this kind of counter-insurgency you need soldiers! Lots of soldiers!! You also need to establish a relationship with the locals - a long lasting relationship which the troops can’t do if they are being rotated out of one area to contain a problem in another!!! WHACK A MOLE(insurgent) tactics does not work against the insurgents and certainly demoralizes our forces! I’m betting come September our fearless leaders will be saying that MORE troops are needed!

    Posted 18 Jun 2007 at 10:23 pm

  7. CDR Salamander wrote:

    You’re reading the right stuff.

    Posted 18 Jun 2007 at 11:28 pm

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