February 6, 2007

The Grand Petraeus Brain Trust and Marching Society

Hatched by Dafydd

File this under "odd but true."

First, I wasn't even aware that Gen. David Petraeus has a PhD in International Relations from Princeton University. Were you? (If only he had studied harder, he might not be stuck in Iraq!)

Now he has put together a "brain trust" of colonels and other mid-level officer advisors who have doctorates from major universities, and who also have extensive combat experience in Iraq and other God-forsaken hellholes:

Gen. David H. Petraeus, the new U.S. commander in Iraq, is assembling a small band of warrior-intellectuals -- including a quirky Australian anthropologist, a Princeton economist who is the son of a former U.S. attorney general and a military expert on the Vietnam War sharply critical of its top commanders -- in an eleventh-hour effort to reverse the downward trend in the Iraq war.... [Whence comes this obsessive insistance that the current strategic change of course in Iraq is a "last ditch" or "eleventh hour" Hail Mary? Suppose this doesn't work as well as hoped; does anyone believe George W. Bush is just going to give up?]

Essentially, the Army is turning the war over to its dissidents, who have criticized the way the service has operated there the past three years, and is letting them try to wage the war their way.

Sounds good to me; frankly, we haven't been doing as well as we ought. Of course, we haven't been losing -- but we haven't obviously been winning, either... and that's the name of this game.

From 2003 through 2005, we won a series of stunning victories, from killing Saddam Hussein's spawn of the Devil to overthrowing the tyrant to pushing the Iraqis to enact a constitution and finally elect the first freely chosen government in that land's history. Things started to fall apart in February 2006, when Musab Zarqawi, head of al-Qaeda in Iraq, destroyed the Al-Askiri Golden-Dome Mosque in Samarra.

It wasn't all bad in 2006; in June of that year, we killed Zarqawi. But apart from a few high points, 2006 was a very bad year for Iraq and a moderately bad year for us, mostly driven by al-Qaeda's attempt -- finally successful after the destruction of the Golden-Dome Mosque -- to force the Iranian-backed Shiite militias into a "gangland war" with the Sunni terrorists. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani could no longer restrain them, and Iranian puppet Muqtada Sadr grew in power and influence.

So it looks like, however good the Casey-Abizaid strategy was in 2003, 2004, and 2005, it fell apart in 2006; something new and different is needed.

Enter the Petraeus Brain Trust. The senior advisors, all colonels and light colonels (no establishment generals or politicians), are an eclectic bunch:

  • Col. Michael J. Meese will be Gen. Petraeus' chief economic advisor. He is the son of Reagan's Atty.Gen. Edwin Meese; Col. Meese "will coordinate security and reconstruction efforts, trying to ensure that 'build' follows the 'clear' and 'hold' phases of action."
  • Australian Lt. Col. David Kilcullen, an anthropologist, will be chief adviser on counterinsurgency ops; Kilcullen saw extensive action in Cyprus, Papua New Guinea, and East Timor, and was recently lent to the State Department as chief counterterrorism strategist. From the MSNBC piece:

    His 2006 essay "Twenty-Eight Articles: Fundamentals of Company-Level Counterinsurgency" was read by Petraeus, who sent it rocketing around the Army via e-mail. Among Kilcullen's dictums: "Rank is nothing: talent is everything" -- a subversive thought in an organization as hierarchical as the U.S. military.
  • Col. Peter R. Mansoor will be Petraeus's XO in Baghdad; Mansoor and McMaster were both part of the "secret panel" convened by Gen. Peter Pace, Commandant of the Marine Corps, in October 2006, to advise him on Iraq.
  • Col. H.R. McMaster, who ran the campaign that recaptured Tal Afar from an al-Qaeda affiliated terrorist group, is the author of Dereliction of Duty, a study critical of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Vietnam War and their foibles and failings. McMaster will be Petraeus' long-term strategic advisor. (If McMaster's name sounds familiar, he was a hero of Tom Clancy's non-fiction book Armored Cav, for his exploits as an armored cavalry (tank) regiment in the Gulf War.

One strategy Petraeus will incorporate was developed and promoted by another member of the Brain Trust, Lt.Col. Douglas A. Ollivant: eschewing the Vietnamesque "Forward Operating Bases" in favor of living and working with the Iraqi Army units that will form a large part of the counterinsurgency force... living among the Iraqi people and interacting with them on a daily basis, not as lords of the land but as fellow soldiers. The idea is to get the Iraqis really involved in the war -- which is, after all, to protect them and their government:

Lt. Col. Douglas A. Ollivant caught Petraeus's eye last year by winning first prize in an Army "counterinsurgency writing" competition, sponsored by the general, with an essay that scorned the U.S. military's reliance in Iraq on big "forward operating bases." "Having a fortress mentality simply isolates the counterinsurgent from the fight," he wrote.

Ollivant, a veteran of battles in Najaf and Fallujah who earned a political science PhD studying Thomas Jefferson, argued that U.S. forces should instead operate from patrol bases shared with Iraqi military and police units. That is exactly what Petraeus plans to do in the coming months in Baghdad, setting up about three dozen such outposts across the city -- which isn't surprising, considering Ollivant has become a top planner for the U.S. military in Baghdad

Naturally, the jilted establishment military academics, in shock at their abandonment by the Brain Trust, are full of reasons why this attempt will fail. (How many of them have commanded troops in the field, as the Brain Trust members all have?)

"Petraeus's 'brain trust' is an impressive bunch, but I think it's too late to salvage success in Iraq," said a professor at a military war college, who said he thinks that the general will still not have sufficient troops to implement a genuine counterinsurgency strategy and that the United States really has no solution for the sectarian violence tearing apart Iraq.

"It's too late to make a difference in Iraq," agreed Bruce Hoffman, a Georgetown University expert on terrorism who has advised the U.S. government on the war effort....

"It wouldn't surprise me if Congress pulled the rug out or the Iraqis blocked major revisions in strategy," said Erin M. Simpson, a Harvard University counterinsurgency expert. "I think they're going to be a very frustrated group."

So the Democrats in Congress hope... because if they succeed, an awful lot of defeatists and doomsters will begin taking on a decidedly simian appearance. (The Democrats already have hands over eyes and ears; too bad they didn't complete the sequence by putting their hands over their mouths.)

I have always recoiled from the noisome slurs that Iraqis are "inherently incapable" of comprehending modernity, or that "insurgencies always win," or that Arabs can never "administer a democracy." They have always stunk like elitism verging on racism to me. The only question is whether we really want victory enough to achieve it.

The Petraeus Brain Trust is lean, hungry for victory, and jumping out of their skins for a chance to smash up the conventional unwisdom on Iraq. I think they're destined for the history books, on the same page as Gen. George Patton, who fought the unbeatable Erwin Rommel -- and beat that "magnificent son of a bitch."

But we'd better buckle our seat belts: it's going to be a bumpy ride.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, February 6, 2007, at the time of 3:52 AM

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Tracked on February 6, 2007 4:41 AM

Comments

The following hissed in response by: Davod

The new approach will mean more US casualties. The race will be to achieve high enough measurable gains (I hate that term) in the short term, so the defeatists (that's what the naysayers are) from both parties are too embarrassed to push the "withold the funds" meme.

The above hissed in response by: Davod [TypeKey Profile Page] at February 6, 2007 5:11 AM

The following hissed in response by: Tomy

If Petraeus pulls this off he will become an American hero. I've been thinking;

"Could he become our next president?"

Tomy

The above hissed in response by: Tomy [TypeKey Profile Page] at February 6, 2007 6:46 AM

The following hissed in response by: DrMalaka

McMaster's book on Vietnam is absolutely amazing and just the idea that we will be using advice from someone like him is a great step forward.

So lets see here, Petraeus wants to take advice from active military persons who have experience in this sort of combat. The democratic leaders of our country call before the senate every retired general that has a problem with our effort but absolutely no experience in this sort of battle. What should that tell the American public about the democrats who want to run this country. They have no interest in educating themselves, they only want to win elections.

The above hissed in response by: DrMalaka [TypeKey Profile Page] at February 6, 2007 7:34 AM

The following hissed in response by: Rod

Tomy

"Could he become our next president?" *no*!

If they are successful the public will not find out. The MSM/DNC will report victories as defeats. I will give 2 examples of this happening

1. A little over a weak ago the Coalition forces had their first major victory in over a year. But readers of the NYT or WPost were told it was a defeat. Viewers of CBS, CNN were told it was a defeat. Only if you watched Fox did you get the idea that this battle was a major victory for our side.
2. I was in Nam in 1968 when the ChiCom and the NVA broke the Tet Cease fire in what the MSM/DNC call the “Tet Offensive”. The only thing stopping us from killing four million (4,000,000) Chicom/NVA warriors was Bobby Mac. We had them on the run but were ordered to not advance! The MSM/DNC has for 39 years reported this as a major defeat for the allies. It was not. It was in fact a victory and had Bobby let us go we would have killed so many it would have taken Ho another generation (20 years) to rebuild his armies.
I know it is hard to believe but the MSM/DNC sometimes reports lies as facts. I have given you two examples of MSM/DNC lies.

If Patreaus does well most Americans will not know. If he fails we will all know.

The above hissed in response by: Rod [TypeKey Profile Page] at February 6, 2007 10:01 AM

The following hissed in response by: Terrye

Rod:

It is not that easy for them to get away with that stuff anymore.

The above hissed in response by: Terrye [TypeKey Profile Page] at February 6, 2007 11:12 AM

The following hissed in response by: nk

"The only question is whether we really want victory enough to achieve it."

Gee, I wish I had said that.

The above hissed in response by: nk [TypeKey Profile Page] at February 6, 2007 11:29 AM

The following hissed in response by: KarmiCommunist

Whence comes this obsessive insistance that the current strategic change of course in Iraq is a "last ditch" or "eleventh hour" Hail Mary? Suppose this doesn't work as well as hoped; does anyone believe George W. Bush is just going to give up?

When a country's people ain't willing to kill the enemy, then leaders like "W" are forced (or 'chose to'?!?) to back-off. Once again, Fallujah was the turning point in a Battle...in the War Against Terrorists and their Supporters/War Against Terrorism. "W" showed weakness or reflected the weakness of the American people in the Battle of Fallujah...simple as that.

It was downhill from there. When the 'Brain Trust' crowd takes over a battle or war, then the end is usually near, and surrender is probably imminent.

Whence comes this obsessive insistance that the current strategic change of course in Iraq is a "last ditch" or "eleventh hour" Hail Mary? Suppose this doesn't work as well as hoped; does anyone believe George W. Bush is just going to give up?

Yes, this fanatical behavior started before the Battle in Afghanistan, then before the Battle in Iraq (remember - "bogged down" - after just 3 days?), and continued right up until the Battle for Fallujah...right up until now. Now, as in let the 'Intelligent' handle battles and wars...

The above hissed in response by: KarmiCommunist [TypeKey Profile Page] at February 6, 2007 4:04 PM

The following hissed in response by: Tomy

KamiC,

There have been two Battles for Fallujah. The first one was when we were suckered into calling back the Marines, and the second when took Fallujah. I think the second battle was more of a turning point than the first. In fact it was the beginning of the end for al qaeda, which is no longer a significant factor.

The Iraq war has had several turning points and more than one type of war to fight. We beat al qaeda and now must beat the rejectionists.

The above hissed in response by: Tomy [TypeKey Profile Page] at February 6, 2007 4:52 PM

The following hissed in response by: KarmiCommunist

Off-Topic:

Why does TypeKey allow me to login, using my old email address, but makes it difficult (if not impossible) to change to my new one?!

Anyway, just got a new computer with Vista on it, and just posted here on my old computer whilst sitting at the same swamp 'desk' (think new pressure treated 1X6X10 (cut in half) on top of the old desk, with a older desk holding the old 20" CRT, with an antique 'Long Table' holding this new 19" widescreen 'slim' monitor...all surrounded by old file cabinets, and you still can't imagine it correctly) whilst posting this. Vista looks great so far, but 1-meg of Ram ain't really enough (what do you expect for less than $600 after rebates of $200 & $150)...2-megs should do; however, as computer 'packages' usually go, this one has only 2-memory slots...each with half-a-meg in it. Office Depot is selling them, and this new rebate offer is good until 'early' March. The floppy is gone, replaced with what looks like a floppy with FOUR Slots instead of just one?!? i've already tried cutting my old floppy disks into quarters, which basically distroyed the data on those disks, so that didn't work(in case someone wondered)!?!

Dropped my Hughes (former Direcway satellite) for a dial-up (Hughes had become sooooo slow), and am waiting to see if cable (Road Runner) might be possible...DSL is my next choice. 1.5 is nice, but @ $59+, a steady 10.0 beats Hughes' 'wHaTeVeR'. BTW, i threw away my TV's, and sold my truck, just to help the environment recover from humble me having two computers during these bad economic times...so to speak.

The above hissed in response by: KarmiCommunist [TypeKey Profile Page] at February 6, 2007 5:13 PM

The following hissed in response by: KarmiCommunist

Tomy,

Irst, 2nd, or however many battles there were for Fallujah, we should've dropped a MOAB on the city before sending in Boots. Sure, Boots need training, and ours did a *GREAT* Job there; however, that is not my point or 'The' point here.

We were at War...3 (if i recall correctly) American civilian contractors were killed in Fallujah, then burned, then hung from a bridge, and MSM made big news about that. Those contractors worked for the US Military...

Our response should've been - warn all of Fallujah that we were going to drop a MOAB on their city, and that they have 48-hours to get their women and children out...with the added warning that no males of puberty age or older could leave. 48-hours later, drop the MOAB, and let the world, the MSM, etc. wonder why.

Thanks for the reply,

Karmi

The above hissed in response by: KarmiCommunist [TypeKey Profile Page] at February 6, 2007 5:34 PM

The following hissed in response by: KarmiCommunist

But we'd better buckle our seat belts: it's going to be a bumpy ride.

3-days into Iraq, and it was reported that our Troops "were bogged down"...

"Bumpy" is over...we are in a PLUNge now.

The above hissed in response by: KarmiCommunist [TypeKey Profile Page] at February 6, 2007 5:45 PM

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