Indirect Effects: Understanding Limits, Responsibility, Counterinsurgency, and Iraq

In Robert Jervis's most excellent book, System Effects: Complexity in Political and Social Life, the legendary Columbia professor details everything you need to know about international relations. It's a fantastic book (an original on my Hall of Fame Reading List), and makes some excellent points that are often missed by political spin doctors, including: that actions undertaken to accomplish stated objectives will lead to unintended effects that cannot always be predicted (implicit in this is the understanding that one can never predict everything that will occur from a single action); that our actions influence the system and transform the parameters, and can subsequently lead to changing behavior on the part of others (or even ourselves); and that our behavior is always influenced-- at least in part-- by the behavior of others. Simple points? Perhaps, but I would argue that most politicians and bloggers alike fail to appreciate these eternal truths. Thus, for example, FDR's alliance with Stalin's Soviet Union was strategically necessary to win World War II, but that doesn't keep contemporary historians from criticizing him for making a deal with the devil. Similarly, Zbigniew Brzezinski's decision to arm the Afghan mujahideen against the Soviet Army was the right move (just as the Reagan Administration was wise to continue and expand the policy), but that doesn't keep modern critics from arguing that it was the single event responsible for creating the so-called "blowback" to 9/11.

It's overbearing to pretend that all decisions should be made with x-ray vision or to pretend that leaders of the past should conform to the standards of today (thus, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson can be condemned for not abolishing slavery). But that doesn't keep us from doing it. Similarly, it's downright arrogant to ignore the third point (that our actions are shaped by the behavior of others), and yet there it is-- conservatives denounce President Clinton for failing to complete the Israeli-Palestinian peace process (even though men named Ehud Barak and Yasir Arafat probably had some responsibility there) and liberals today blast President Bush for failing to eliminate North Korean nuclear ambitions (or to defeat the Iraqi insurgency), somehow convincing themselves that the Pyongyang regime or the Iraqi insurgents don't have a vote in the process. But that's politics for you, and it's one of the reasons that I don't really know (or care) much about what they have to say on strategic issues-- few of them know what they're talking about, anyway.

That was the irony in all the attention being cast on the Senator Clinton / SECDEF Rumsfeld verbal exchange in today's Senate hearing-- they were arguing about words and actions (as in whether the SECDEF had presented too rosy of a scenario in the past, and whether he was capable of turning the situation around), but there was little attention on the details of what was actually occurring on the ground or why those policies were supposedly failing. For what it's worth, the only things I found interesting was CENTCOM commander GEN Abizaid (who does "get it") testifying that:

“Iraq could move toward civil war” if the violence is not contained.

“I believe that the sectarian violence is probably as bad as I have seen it,” he said, adding that the top priority in Iraq is to secure the capital, where factional violence has surged in recent weeks despite efforts by the new Iraqi government to stop the fighting.

That was followed by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Peter Pace, who "stressed that ultimatey [preventing a civil war] depends on the Iraqi more than on the U.S. military."

And there it is: the situation in Iraq has something to do with the actions and behavior of Iraqis-- Shi'ites, Sunnis, Kurds, Yazedis, Turkmen, et. al.-- and not just on what US military commanders instruct their Soldiers and Marines to do. Of course, I'm not saying that the Bush Administration, the Pentagon, military leaders, and indeed individual lieutenants, sergeants, and privates don't have any influence in this process-- remember, Jervis specifically noted that our actions re-shape the world around us-- just that one shouldn't pretend that any single person is responsible for what's happening on the ground. Accepting that, of course, will allow Americans to understand the limits of what changes to our strategy can wrought in Iraq... As if we needed more proof that our military leaders are heads and shoulders above the politicians.

Of course, not all of our military leaders "get it" (as I have been arguing on this blog for quite some time now). The Washington Post's Thomas Ricks-- a journalist who does "get it"-- argues (among other things) in his recently published book, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, that "the US military failed to anticipate--and then failed to recognize--the insurgency, and tried to fight it with conventional methods that only fanned its flames." That I agree with this premise probably comes as no surprise to regular readers of this blog, but Ricks makes a far more compelling case than I could and it's definitely a must-read for anyone even remotely interested in finding out what we did wrong and what we can do to make things better (and because he doesn't assign political blame, I suspect it won't be popular with the anti-Administration critics whose real agenda is not to learn from our mistakes but to embarass the Administration and potentially influence the upcoming elections). But New York Times reporter Paul von Zielbauer provides further anecdotal evidence that not all our uniformed leaders "get it." The article surrounds the Article 32 (like a grand jury) hearing of four 101st Airborne Division soldiers, and I have a long-standing policy not to comment on ongoing investigations and judicial cases, so I'm not going to touch that-- rather, I'm going to focus on some of the points made in the article itself:

Pfc. Bradley Mason of Company C said that on May 8, the night before the raid, Colonel Steele told soldiers to “kill all of them.”

Three other soldiers gave similar testimony. First Lt. Justin Werheim said Colonel Steele had told 100 soldiers before the raid, “We’re going to hit the ground shooting and kill all the Al Qaeda in Iraq insurgents.”

Under cross-examination, Pfc. Jason R. Joseph said Company C soldiers were told that their rules of engagement were to “kill all military-age males that were not actively surrendering.”

. . .

But Captain Sienko also said Colonel Steele had told his men not to kill indiscriminately.

“Colonel Steele specifically said during our combined arms rehearsal that we’re not just going to the island and shoot everyone,” Captain Sienko said. “Make sure you have well-aimed shots. Make sure you’re killing people that need to be killed.”

. . .

Colonel Steele, who led the 1993 mission in Somalia later made famous in the book and film “Black Hawk Down,” has a reputation for aggressive measures. In Iraq, as a commander involved in harrowing assaults against insurgents, he inspired the use of “kill boards” to track how many Iraqis each soldier had killed over time.

On the bottom of Company C’s kill board, Private Mason said, was a phrase to inspire soldiers in combat: “Let the bodies hit the floor.”

Again, without getting into the command responsibility or assigning blame (that's the responsibility of the judicial process, not a blogger no matter how intelligent and well-informed he thinks he might be), the comments definitely seem to indicate a senior commander who doesn't seem to appreciate the differences of conventional war and counterinsurgency-- his points about "well-aimed shots," notwithstanding. Defeating your opponents by killing every last one works well-- very well, in fact-- in a maneuver war against a conventional enemy (in fact, we did it all the time to BLUFOR units at the National Training Center), but such a tactic doesn't produce the same results in an unconventional war-- such methods are generally counterproductive and only seek to fuel the insurgency, as Ricks documents in Fiasco. And while I'm not against "kill boards" per se (make no mistake that for the insurgency to be destroyed, a lot of bad people are going to have to die), I'd be suspect of any commander who thinks it's an adequate metric for victory in Iraq. In fact, it's got about as much of a correlation with victory as batting average does with scoring runs-- which is to say there's much better metrics out there.

Of course, as Jervis would say, it's not so simple as a direct single-cause/single-effect relationship. If we want to reduce oil spills, for example, we might think we can do so by simply doubling the width of the tanker hulls, only to find that larger costs might drive suppliers to seek other forms of transportation (such as pipelines) that create environmental disasters of their own-- or that the extra thickness itself might lead to increased crashes as overconfident ship captains proceed at faster and unsafe speeds. Lieutenant-General David Barno's tenure in Kabul and Colonel H.R. McMaster's experience in Tall Afar stand as evidence that many military commanders do "get" counterinsurgency and know what has to be done to win, or that the simple oft-repeated mantra that "we're losing in Iraq" shouldn't be stated so casually and without understanding just how complicated such a process really is. Damien Cave's article in The New York Times, "In Iraq, It's Hard to Trust Anyone in Uniform," is a perfect example of that-- it seems that Iraqi militias have begun disguising themselves in official Iraqi Army uniforms in order to take advantage of the latter's "authority" in carrying out "vigilante justice" against their rivals and enemies. But buried near the end of the article is an interesting point:

Bashar Hassan said he doubted that he would ever trust Iraqis in uniform again. He said he hoped that the additional American soldiers being sent to secure the capital “would help us honestly this time, and not let us kill each other while they stand by and watch.”

. . .

To report a crime, if they are brave enough to do so, many Iraqis are turning to American commanders or neighborhood militias that are sprouting up despite recent prohibitions from the Ministry of Defense.

While many of our commanders don't "get it," and some of our junior leaders and Soldiers may very well be guilty of excessive abuse or unsanctioned violence, Bashar Hassan makes it clear that not all American servicemembers are viewed as "the enemy" by Iraqis, and many Iraqis even see us as more neutral and fair arbiters of justice than their compatriots. That doesn't conform with what the talking heads and pundits might want you to think, but that doesn't make it any less true.

It should also be noted that the Iraqis perpetrating these offenses are not legitimate members of the Iraqi security forces. While some ISF soldiers are undoubtedly guilty of committing crimes (just as are some Americans, Brits, French, Italians, Germans, Canadians, et. al.), the vast majority are doing their duty and are actually coming along very well. As many of you know, my old commander-- Colonel John H. Hort (affectionately known as "Dirty Hort" by his officers and Soldiers alike-- has been leading the security assistance mission for the 9th Infantry Division as its senior trainer and Military Transition Team (MiTT) chief. Colonel Hort-- a tough leader with an impressive force of will, who isn't known for sugar-coating his opinions-- reports that though the Iraqis still need "quick reaction help, aviation asserts, medevac assistance, intelligence and logistics support," they have come along quite well and are making extensive progress. It's not perfect, but it's respectable and it's definitely far better than what the naysayers (very few of whom have ever seen an Iraqi unit with their own eyes) might try to tell you. If the trend continues, perhaps President Jalal Talabani's assertion that "Iraqi security forces will gradually take security responsibility by the end of this year for all the provinces of Iraq" won't be all that far off. As I've long said, if US forces in Iraq can get down to 40,000 or so-- with MiTTs, Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRT), and quick reaction forces providing the bulk of such manpower-- then I think the popular focus will come off the mission, and the real professionals will be able to fight this war free of the current three-ring circus provided by all the amateurs and armchair generals who think they know strategic policy because they studied literature and watched Saving Private Ryan in college.

Or maybe not. System Effects definitely warns that all our actions have unintended consequences, and that we can never achieve our goals with one stroke of the pen (much as we like to think otherwise). Then, too, other people get a vote in this, too, and they can influence our behavior... So the future remains to be seen and no one knows what's coming next, least of all me.

Oh, but if you're wondering, I didn't study literature and I didn't watch Private Ryan until after college, but I'm definitely one of the amateur armchar quarterbacks.