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Title: Doing It Right
Source:
Defense and the National Interest Website
URL Source: http://www.d-n-i.net/lind/lind_6_29_05.htm
Published: Jun 29, 2005
Author: William S. Lind
Post Date: 2005-06-29 20:23:43 by historian1944
Keywords: Doing, Right
Views: 125
Comments: 20
On War #123 June 29, 2005 Doing It Right By William S. Lind [The views expressed in this article are those of Mr. Lind, writing in his personal capacity. They do not reflect the opinions or policy positions of the Free Congress Foundation, its officers, board or employees, or those of Kettle Creek Corporation. An article in the June 23rd Christian Science Monitor, “A US patrol gains trust in Baghdad neighborhood,” tells the story of an American unit that gets Fourth Generation war. When the patrol (in Humvees) passes a busy street, Lieutenant Waters . . . tells his men to get out and start walking. As the foot patrol makes its way through the streets, an old Shiite woman in a black hejab invites Waters into her house. At the threshold, Waters politely waits. "I don't want to track the dirt from the street into your house," he tells her. . . Waters is trying to gain the trust of this tense district, where the US has previously been regarded with hatred and suspicion. . . After long months in this sector of Baghdad, Waters’s company has not killed anyone nor has it lost a single soldier. "We are not killing machines; we are men," Waters explains. "I think if we can deal with the separation from our families, and not become hardhearted, we might just be able to leave here changed in a positive way.” "It's just like the Hippocratic oath," he says. “‘First, do no harm.’ " What has enabled Lt. Waters and his unit of California National Guardsmen to get it right? Lt. Waters is a cop. Specifically, he is a sheriff from Sacramento. He is dealing with the people of Baghdad the same way he deals with the people back home, politely and with a genuine desire to help. His unit has not killed anyone because Lt. Waters knows cops succeed by de-escalating, not by escalating violence. Cops try very hard not to kill people. In fact, cops don’t want to fight at all. Just as having soldiers who want to fight is important in Second and Third Generation war, so not wanting to fight is key to success in the Fourth Generation. Any fight, whether won or lost, ultimately works against an outside power that is trying to damp down a Fourth Generation conflict. Fighting ramps up disorder, and Fourth Generation entities thrive on disorder. Disorder undermines the local government’s legitimacy, because disorder proves that government cannot provide security. Fighting usually means that locals get killed, and when that happens, the relatives and friends of the casualties are then obliged to join the fight to get revenge. Violence escalates, when success requires de-escalation. Again, cops know all this. Here we see another lesson for 4GW: Reserve and National Guard units are more valuable than regular troops. Why? Because they contain a lot of cops. Lt. Waters is not the only cop who has succeeded in Iraq. Other Guard and Reserve units have let their cops take the lead, working the same way they do back home to de-escalate violence and bring security. Like Lt. Waters, they have achieved some local successes. In order to turn local successes into success on a larger scale, American policy needs to focus more broadly on de-escalation. Here again there is some tentative good news. According to the London Sunday Times, the U.S. is now negotiating with several of the Sunni insurgent groups. Tensions between Baathist elements of the Iraqi resistance and Islamist elements, especially those employing foreign fighters, have already escalated to the point of firefights between the two. We should be able to make deals with some of the Baathists. The Times reported that the resistance leaders we are talking with have one main demand: that we set a date for leaving Iraq. One of the Iraqi negotiators was quoted as saying, “We told them it did not matter whether we are talking about one year or a five-year plan but that we insisted on having a timetable nonetheless.” That is a demand the U.S. should be willing to meet. Not only would a set date for American withdrawal undermine much of the resistance, it would turn our opponents back on themselves by allowing the Baathists to focus on fighting the Islamists, assuming we are smart enough to let them do so. It would also help the American public see some end to a conflict with which it is understandable growing weary. Fourth Generation theory says that to have any hope of victory, an outside force needs to de-escalate on every level. If other American units in Iraq could learn from cops like Lt. Waters how to de-escalate on the local, tactical level, and we could combine that with de-escalation on the strategic level through a deal with Baathist insurgents, we might still be able to avoid outright defeat. Given the consequences of earlier errors such as disbanding the Iraqi army, that is as close to victory as we can now realistically hope to come. Word document available upon request. To interview Mr. Lind, please contact: Phyllis Hughes (pehughes@freecongress.org) Free Congress Foundation 717 Second St., N.E. Washington, D.C. 20002 Phone 202-543-8474 The Free Congress Foundation, is a 28-year-old Washington, DC-based conservative educational foundation (think tank) that teaches people how to be effective in the political process, advocates judicial reform, promotes cultural conservatism, and works against the government encroachment of individual liberties.
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#1. To: historian1944 (#0)
HUGE ups to Lt.Waters. Thanks so much for this post.
Latest from William Lind. I think that this article shows that some within the Army are being allowed to deal with things in the way they see fit, rather than the way that doctrine might say to deal with locals. I do believe, though, that we are still in the "kill all the ragheads" mindset, and the belief that if we kill enough they will stop (despite ample evidence that in the Middle East, at least, that is not usually the case.)
The way that he's dealing with things should be the norm, not the exception. I really like the part when he stops at the doorway and explains that he doesn't want to track mud into the house. Iraq in winter gets much more rain than one expects, and there is clay based boot-sucking mud everywhere. I think it also implies to the homeowner that not only is he not wanted to get their house dirty, but he's also not going to arbitrarily enter. De-escalation is something that Lind has been talking about for over a year now, and I think it is interesting that the Marine Corps was talking about doing just that, immediately prior to the Fallujah mess kicking off, almost like the insurgency recognized that their public pronouncements of how they were going to operate were a threat to them. After all, if we can get a large portion of the population to not tolerate the insurgency's presence, we win. After the Fallujah debacle, it went from a maneuver warfare mindset (find the center of gravity that will make them stop fighting) to an attrition warfare mindset (kill as many of them as possible,) to our detriment.
What has enabled Lt. Waters and his unit of California National Guardsmen to get it right? Lt. Waters is a cop. Specifically, he is a sheriff from Sacramento. Good cop, good soldier bump. I suppose it is too much to hope that the Pentagon would consider training all units more like this one.
"Anyone who has proclaimed violence his method inexorably must choose lying as his principle." - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
I admire Lt Waters philosophy, although I never thought of it in quite those terms. Police should generally follow this advice, although it's not always correct in every circumstance. Those wishing to transform a culture from one that doesn't respect these values to one that does should always follow Lt Waters advice.
With the neocons in charge? Hah! Their heroes have always been traitors, spies, Marxists, radicals, mad bombers, imperialists, and television "personalities".
I've got to see what the Center for Army Lessons Learned has written about tactics like this. I haven't seen anything from them yet, on how to de- escalate, or much on lessons learned of this type. I think that dealing with locals like this probably won't catch on at higher levels or be incorporated into doctrine (though I sincerely hope they prove me wrong on this one) because it'll be seen as too passive and weak. Individual soldiers on the ground, if put in the right circumstances and given good leadership at the lowest levels will come around to dealing with locals like this. It's all about the leaders, though. My guess is that, in the unit discussed, mistreatment of the locals will not be tolerated. If you get a unit with leadership that believe that all Iraqis are untermensch, then tactics like this will be discouraged.
You're absolutely correct, and Lind has written about that in the past, when he's said that the reason that the British haven't been thrown out of Northern Ireland is because they've taken more casualties than they've inflicted. They're not retaliating in response to the attacks on their soldiers, not allowing the resistance to gather enough members to throw them out with their actions. I think you've hit another salient point in the culture aspect. We've got to train the soldiers better in the cultures of the areas they're fighting in. Iraqis don't deal with things in the same manner as a Western society does. There are things that are perfectly normal for an American that might lead an Iraqi to feel the need to shed some blood. One of the more interesting things is the insults of showing the soles of one's shoes to another. The Marine Corps is trying (they seem to be the only branch that seems to get it sometimes) where I've seen a long briefing about some cultural aspects. The most important slide in the presentation was one that showed a Muslim woman being searched, and underneath in bold letters was "Keep your hands off the merchandise!!!" I always feel bad for the soldiers, they're doing the best they can under circumstances that they shouldn't be in, when they've got deficient training, senior leadership that seems to be more concerned with amenities (in Balad, after getting off of a C-130, I beheld my Iraq War symbol-there was a port-a- potty with a sign that said "General Officers Only" on it) than really knowing what's going on in Iraq. They're using doctrine that might have been effective against the Soviet Union, and many lessons and urgent needs for training that the Center for Army Lessons Learned and the Journal for Urban Operations have been screaming about since 1998 and earlier have been ignored. Not to mention that the National Command Authority isn't discussing what the definition of "is" is, they're talking about matters of emphasis, and parsing words instead of saying that they're f**king the dog on this one and have been since the beginning and begging forgiveness from those that they've wronged.
With Perle, Feith, Wolfowitz and crew running the show I suspect there has been plenty of training, just all of it evil. You think Lyndie England and her friends from West Virginia came up with sexual humiliation techniques out of the blue?
Can't argue with that. What a strange path we've taken. I think it excessively amusing that the Bush administration used an Amnesty Int'l report (and cites other Human Rights Watch reports) to show how bad a man Hussein was, but then cries when the same groups criticize us. The reports that we used to try to justify invasion of Iraq also show that he was using many of the same techniques we are now. Guess it's only bad if he does it. I think the most ludicrous defense was used by Graner when he said that they never got training or a copy of the Geneva Accords and how they related to treatment of prisoners. And this from a corrections officer! Maybe the state he's from needs to have its prisons investigated. I think it's very strange that all of the abuses seem to end at E-6(Staff Sergeant) and O-3 (Captain) ranks. No one above that seems to ever get prosecuted for anything. As far as Abu Ghraib is concerned, there should have been some Captains, Majors, Lieutenant Colonels and full bird Colonels getting courts-martial. When I was in, you were taught that, as a leader, you were responsible for everything your soldiers did, or failed to do. I guess that's outmoded now, and I've only been off active duty for 6 years! If all those officers were ignorant of what the soldiers were doing, they should have been court martialed, because it's part of their responsibility to know what is going on.
That's why they'll have to resort to force (or freezing my checking account) to shut me up. Legitimacy is earned in western tradition...
I'm just waiting for some fuck-up like Negroponte to say he was just following orders when he issued related orders...
Thanks.
I totally agree. That's why the mixing of the military and local police departments is so very dangerous. Very different missions.
Right. Police oppress peasants while military pillages abroad, got it.
Wrong. Prior to oppressing peasants, police officers steal their cash and valuables. It's all in the rules and procedures.
the whole thing was a plot by the mustard lobby...
Dijon, but of course.
"Anyone who has proclaimed violence his method inexorably must choose lying as his principle." - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Je souhaite que je n'aie pas mangé toute cette carnivore de piments.
I love babelfish, but I don't think I would care for pepper or unpeppered carnivores.
"Anyone who has proclaimed violence his method inexorably must choose lying as his principle." - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
#2. To: aristeides, Sam Houston, tom007, Zipporah, 1776, wbales, Eoghan, Dakmar, Jethro Tull, lodwick, Diana, justlurking, robin (#0)
#3. To: lodwick (#1)
#4. To: historian1944 (#2)
"It's just like the Hippocratic oath," he says. “‘First, do no harm.’ "
#5. To: historian1944, Jethro Tull (#2)
What has enabled Lt. Waters and his unit of California National Guardsmen to get it right? Lt. Waters is a cop. Specifically, he is a sheriff from Sacramento. He is dealing with the people of Baghdad the same way he deals with the people back home, politely and with a genuine desire to help. His unit has not killed anyone because Lt. Waters knows cops succeed by de-escalating, not by escalating violence. Cops try very hard not to kill people. In fact, cops don’t want to fight at all.
#6. To: robin (#4)
Good cop, good soldier bump. I suppose it is too much to hope that the Pentagon would consider training all units more like this one.
#7. To: robin (#4)
#8. To: Dakmar (#5)
#9. To: historian1944 (#8)
We've got to train the soldiers better in the cultures of the areas they're fighting in.
#10. To: Dakmar (#9)
#11. To: historian1944 (#10)
I think it excessively amusing that the Bush administration used an Amnesty Int'l report (and cites other Human Rights Watch reports) to show how bad a man Hussein was, but then cries when the same groups criticize us.
#12. To: historian1944 (#10)
When I was in, you were taught that, as a leader, you were responsible for everything your soldiers did, or failed to do. I guess that's outmoded now, and I've only been off active duty for 6 years!
#13. To: historian1944 (#3)
Excellent.
#14. To: Dakmar (#5)
Lt Waters
#15. To: Jethro Tull (#14)
Very different missions.
#16. To: Dakmar (#15)
#17. To: Jethro Tull (#16)
France freedom fries
#18. To: Dakmar (#17)
#19. To: robin (#18)
Dijon, but of course.
#20. To: Dakmar (#19)
Auspico che non abbia mangiato tutto questo carnivoro di pimenti.
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