New Iraq Goal: 'Win The Peace'

by Mark Sappenfield


With little fanfare during the past few weeks, the Pentagon has rolled out one of the most significant changes to military doctrine since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The policy directive recently signed by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld declares that the job of planning and training to win the peace after a war is now virtually as important to the military as the conflict itself.

The document marks a sea change from the ideals of the past, when the military was loath to take on any responsibility beyond waging and winning wars. Indeed, it suggests that the Pentagon increasingly sees Iraq and Afghanistan as templates for wars of the future, with success hinging not only on military superiority, but also on the ability to reconstruct failed states.

In some respects, it is the closest that military leaders have come to acknowledging that such comprehensive planning was absent from the Iraq enterprise. Yet experts warn that the solution is profound and problematic — in its implications. By essentially asking the Army in particular to temper its deeply ingrained warrior ethos with a new and more nuanced set of responsibilities, it places yet more expectations on a service already stretched thin and perhaps not designed for the task.

"War is not just about major combat anymore, it's about stability," says Seth Jones, an analyst at RAND Corp. in Arlington, Va. "The challenge will be taking a conventional Army that has so far not shown itself capable of doing these sorts of stability operations and retraining them."

Both inside and outside the Pentagon, there is a mounting sense that this must be done — and on many levels. In fact, the Pentagon's directive is just one part of the administration's emerging strategy for dealing with what happens after the military phase of a war is won. On a parallel path, President Bush announced a separate plan Wednesday to put Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in charge of an effort to identify corrupt states and coordinate future postwar stability operations with the Pentagon.
"The [Pentagon] directive will help ensure that the Department of Defense develops the capabilities required to meet future stability operations challenges as part of an integrated U.S. government effort," says Jeffrey Nadaner, deputy assistant secretary of Defense for stability operations, by e-mail.

In the constellation of threats against the United States, many potential flash points involve either countries that could crumble during a conflict — such as North Korea — or others that could have to be dismembered to ensure a friendlier regime — such as Syria or Iran.

In any of these cases, the military operations would be perhaps the more straightforward aspect of a war. As in Iraq, the greatest work could come in building a government from scratch, ensuring civilians' access to water and power, stamping out insurgents, and so on. It is this new reality that the Pentagon is facing in its directive.

"Many stability operations tasks are best performed by indigenous, foreign, or U.S. civilian professionals," the document states. "Nonetheless, U.S. military forces shall be prepared to perform all tasks necessary to establish or maintain order when civilians cannot do so."

Such thinking is a direct consequence of the Iraq experience. The scale of the task in Iraq suggests that the new directive particularly affects the Army, which is the service left to do the occupying.

Clearly, the Army is already making use of one of Iraq's primary lessons. "It has to do with being able to provide immediate help to the people after the engagement is over," said Gen. William "Scott" Wallace, commander of the Army Training and Doctrine Command, in a briefing this week. "It's the nonlethal aspects of our business that I think we're gaining a much greater and deeper appreciation for."

The Pentagon has so far rejected the idea of special stability-operation units in favor of plans for a more general indoctrination of all troops. And that should not interfere with the military's dominance on the battlefield, writes Nadaner: "The effort to improve the balance between stability and combat operations should not undermine the warrior ethos, which is the foundation of armed forces."

But especially at a time when the Army is accepting more recruits who make substandard scores on aptitude tests, some analysts wonder whether the new approach asks too much. "There is a point beyond which it isn't practical to expect so many different things from the same group of people," says Loren Thompson, a defense expert at the Lexington Institute in Arlington.

Already, the Army has been asked to become more flexible, more agile, and more intelligent to make up for the decreased size of the force since the end of the cold war. The new directive could call on it to fundamentally change its culture and training: Each new hour of stability-operations training could mean an hour of combat training lost. No longer are they simply machines of war, grinding toward some military objective. Now, they are to be intermittent instruments of peace, as well.

The problem, suggests Dr. Thompson, is that "people who are good killers tend not to be good mediators."

To his mind, the directive is an unlikely cause, more show than substance. The lesson of Iraq, he says, is to avoid wars like Iraq. Yet as U.S. foreign policy focuses more intently on regions of the world fretted by autocratic regimes and lawlessness, there is a sense among many military officials that some sort of stabilization force is necessary. The test of their resolve will come as the Pentagon attempts to overcome institutional inertia and move its ideas into the realm of on-the-ground reality.

"The easier part was rewriting the doctrine," says Dr. Jones. "The difficult part of this will be actually doing it."

This article offers an excellent reason for why the U.S. should stay in Iraq until they win the peace, because it is in the world's and U.S.'s best interest long-term.

Here is some bad news for everyone: Civil war in Irak http://www.military.com/opinion/0,15202,88803,00.html (Feb 23, 2006).
While I was in total disagreement with the president for sending our troops over there, I fully support our troops, wherever they go. And if a civil war starts in Irak, it will most likely destroy the fruits of the effort of our troops over there, and render the deaths of our soldiers (and those of our close allieds) in vain. And that makes me sick to my stomach.

While the destruction of the Askariya shrine is an abomination, it's frightening that a relatively small group can potentially ignite a war by destroying one building (...or perhaps, two?). The effect is that an extraordinary amount of control and power--the fate of an entire nation or more--is truly in the hands of a few extremists. I suppose it could be argued that a civil war is inevitable given the discord among the major religious factions in Iraq--if not this incident, then something else would have been used, and with the same outcome. Unfortunately this is true, and not isolated to what's going on in Iraq. One day, a deranged American might find a way to destroy the Dome of the Rock or some other structure that Muslims regard as even more sacred than the Askariya shrine. Though it would be nothing the overwhelming majority of Americans would sanction, I shudder to think what the outcome might be. When a jihad against an entire nation can erupt over the publication of a few controversial cartoons, something is terribly wrong. Our own country is not immune, given that 911 somehow led to our occupation of Iraq. I don't know what the answer is, but perhaps the first step is promoting awareness about the absurdity and danger of such reactionary thinking. One person or group does not represent a whole country. In an age where the next attack could involve nuclear or biological weapons, the survival of the world as we know it--and as they know it--is at stake. Everyone---everyone needs to know this.

It was Republican greed for an easy conquest and oil that led to the FUBAR in Iraq, not 9/11. Osama Bin Laden is still at large.

Yeah, but 911 was the excuse. It all makes sense if you follow it through logically:

1. Terrorists fly planes into American buildings.
2. Attempt to track down the mastermind and then destroy him.
3. We can't find him.
5. No choice but to invade Iraq because of all the nonexistent WMDs in that country.


Edit: Hey! Someone removed #4. Now I forget what it said...

Shawn:
If my comments are not welcome in this website, I would like to be notified of it. My post from yesterday in this thread was short and contained no offensive language that I know of. I request an explanation...

It makes "sense" to the Republicans, perhaps.

Apollo, the Greek sun god, son of the king of the gods, Zeus, drove the chariot of the sun across the sky every day. Apollo stands for order and discipline. Every day as winter neared, the sun would describe an arc slightly lower in the sky, and as the winter solstice passed, the arc would rise again, and the cycle would repeat, year after year. Dionysus, god of the power and fertility of nature, was the opposite of Apollo in temperment: unmeasured and spontaneous, Dionysus was also called Bacchus, the god of wine. It should be expected that an impulsive act like an unjustified and hurried war would be committed by somebody with a (past or present) drinking problem. A war to which we were committed with no clear plan beyond the initial destruction and hurried celebration of the "mission accomplished."

Here is my comment pasted from my profile which was deleted from the thread by the moderator or some suicide bomber or someone evil or Shawn or President Bush perhaps:

"I find it a shame to all human-kind that in this, the new millenium, and after all these years of imperial domination in the region, only one country in the Middle East stands as a shining example of democracy: Israel. While I never agreed with us going to Irak, I was hoping that we could have accomplish the original goal: Bring another democratic country to the region. Regardless of our political views about our president, I believe we should realize that it's in our best interest that this goal is accomplished at this point. The consecuences of a civil war in Irak will be nothing short of catastrophic for the region and the world. We should, at this point, stand behind our president on the subject; or pay the consecuences (reversed FUBAR)"

I recall seeing this post earlier before it was censored. To paraphrase a great patriot, I may not agree with everything someone says but I will defend his right to say it. Especially if he learns to spell "millennium", "Iraq", and "consequences".

Agreed. Right now I feel like a google user in China: Eves dropped on, watched closely, censored without notice and soon-to-be imprisoned at any time without notice and without knowing why. I'm going to save this post in my computers files in case it dissapears as well. If I'm not heard from again, somebody please take care of my dog and give my money to a worthy charity. The SPCA or Feed The Children will do

sorry I didn't see this earlier, code buttons. Your comments are welcome. I did not delete your post. Looking over your deleted-but-reposted post, I do not find any reason why it would be deleted.

If someone would like to come forward on this and offer an explanation, that would be appreciated.

If it happens again, PM me or better yet, email me directly at samikula - at - ucdavis . edu

Supporting troops simply because they come from the same country as you is unjustifiable. 'America' and 'Iraq' are abitrary ideas, and it is an indictment on human intelligence that people are compelled to kill and die for them.

The value of an American's life is no greater than the value of an Iraqi's life. To a truly circumspect and ethical individual, the fact that they themselves are American will not cause them to value American lives any higher than Iraqi lives. Thus, when American troops go to war to kill Iraqi troops, and vice versa, or any such conflict, he will support not troop nor general nor president nor ideology, but feel compassion for them all and work only to end the violence.

Patriotism is stupid. If you want to support your troops wherever they go, pray this way:

"O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle - be Thou near them! With them, in spirit, we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it-for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen."

- The War Prayer, Mark Twain.