An assessment of US Army tactics in Iraq, by the British Brigadier who is the Deputy Commander of the Office of Security Transition in the Coalition Office for Training and Organizing Iraq’s Armed Forces. (Couldn’t they have come up with an acronym for that? “DCOST in COTOIAF” sounds much better.) Sparks are flying. As the Guardian reports:
A senior British officer has criticised the US army for its conduct in Iraq, accusing it of institutional racism, moral righteousness, misplaced optimism, and of being ill-suited to engage in counter-insurgency operations.
The blistering critique, by Brigadier Nigel Aylwin-Foster, who was the second most senior officer responsible for training Iraqi security forces, reflects criticism and frustration voiced by British commanders of American military tactics.
What is startling is the severity of his comments – and the decision by Military Review, a US army magazine, to publish them.
[Later]
OK, I’ve read the paper now. It’s unfortunate that the media have concentrated on a few easy, inflammatory topics. This seems to be a serious and well-researched study. Much of the data is simply incontrovertible: the absence of COIN (counterinsurgency) training in the US Army, the cultural focus on “destruction” rather than “defeat”, and the surprising “de-professionalisation” of the US Army during the 1990s. I had not previously been aware of the “exodus of the captains”, which led to rushed promotions and a consequent reluctance to trust junior officers, exacerbating the trend towards bureaucracy and micromanagement. (None of these issues should be unfamiliar to business people who have been involved in rapid organizational change.)
And the article closes with another idea that resonates for those of us in commercial organizations. The US Army is showing signs of “silver bullet” thinking. (My term, not the author’s.) It’s recognized many of the issues, it’s establishing programs to address the defects – especially in training – but it still views these changes in terms of its core warfighting mission. It’s like Christiensen’s The Innovator’s Dilemma; the US Army doesn’t realize that it has to deliberately replace and supercede its old thinking and culture, not merely patch it up. The author is concerned that the US Army may be starting to congratulate itself on having successfully recognized the need for change and adapted, not realizing that it hasn’t really changed at all. And how easy it is to make that mistake….