Page 2 of 3 US military ripe for a fight with Obama
By Mark Perry
of experience in Bosnia and in Operation Iraqi Freedom. McKiernan recently came
to Washington to brief civilian policymakers on the Afghan war. His message
echoed Mullen's: "I always like to say that this campaign is not going to be
decided militarily, and that's difficult sometimes for a guy in uniform to
say," McKiernan told one policy gathering. "We're not going to run out of bad
people in Afghanistan that have bad intentions, and we're not going to kill and
capture so many of these bad people that it's going to break the will of all
the insurgent groups that operate in Afghanistan. Ultimately, it's going to be
people that decide that they want a different outcome in Afghanistan. It's
going to be a political outcome."
McKiernan was not always so welcome in Washington. On the eve of the Iraq war,
in March of 2003, former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld went to Kuwait to
meet with senior American commanders. A part of the event was televised, with
cameras showing Rumsfeld standing behind a lectern during a briefing. As the
camera panned the room it caught McKiernan rolling his eyes. CNN beamed the
picture into the White House. "He was absolutely sunk," an army colleague says.
The incident was just the beginning of McKiernan's troubles. During the Iraq
invasion, McKiernan flew into Iraq to receive a briefing from General William
Wallace on the surprising tenacity of Saddam Hussein's Fedayeen militias.
McKiernan wanted to suspend the attack on Baghdad until the Fedayeen were
defeated. The invasion's commander, Tommy Franks, disagreed. In a meeting on
overall strategy, Franks implied that McKiernan was being overly cautious.
McKiernan was not intimidated: "Dave thought it was just stupid to ignore the
Fedayeen," an army colleague notes and adds: "He made his views pretty well
known up the chain [of command]. Tommy [Franks] didn't like it one bit."
McKiernan also questioned Rumsfeld's post-war decision canceling the deployment
of the army's 1st Cavalry Division. The 1st Cav, McKiernan believed, was
essential to solidifying American military gains and suppressing Baghdad's
unruly mobs.
When it came time for Rumsfeld to appoint a commander to oversee post-war
operations in Iraq, McKiernan was pushed aside "because he wasn't a team
player" and the ill-prepared Ricardo Sanchez was given the job. Despite the
snub, McKiernan remains dedicated, if opinionated. Asked recently about what
form a future Afghan government should take, McKiernan's comment was pointed:
"I don't care," he says, "so long as al-Qaeda is not a part of it." The
implication is that the US commander is perfectly willing to allow Kabul to
shape a government that would include the Taliban - a political solution that
would isolate al-Qaeda and "other irreconcilables". McKiernan's words reflect
the military's new shorthand that differentiates between "insurgents" and
"terrorists" - a stark repudiation of Bush's definition of a terrorist as
anyone who objects to American policies.
While McKiernan is quick to tell reporters that "Afghanistan is not Iraq", the
program he outlines for the country looks a lot like the one adopted by
military officers in Anbar province, where "insurgents" were broken off from
al-Qaeda "terrorists" and brought into local governing coalitions. As McKiernan
notes: "What I do think has great merit ... is a community outreach program
that takes an area - say a district - in Afghanistan and brings together the
leaders of that district, whether they are tribal elders, whether they are
mullahs, whether they're religious scholars in a shura [council] and
allows them to select a committee to represent that community and then have the
government of Afghanistan, with support from the international community,
provide that committee the wherewithal, the authority and some resources to
help not only provide security but represent that community from a bottom-up
approach and incentivize it." He adds: "So that's a little bit different
approach than the Sunni awakening or tribal engagement in Iraq, but the common
part of it is it's a bottom-up approach at the community basis."
McKiernan faces obstacles in making his plan work. A Washington Post article of
November 19 detailed these obstacles, focusing on Taliban attacks on the supply
route into Afghanistan from Pakistan. But that's only a part of the problem.
The other was caused by the Bush administration. "We should have alternative
supply routes through the north and not have to rely on the roads from
Pakistan," a senior serving army officer says, "but we can't get a northern
route because the Bush administration pissed off the Russians in Georgia."
Negotiations with the Russians over a northern resupply route that would be
place the 67,000 US and NATO soldiers at the end of "a secure tether" have been
stalled, according to this officer. "This is typical of the White House, they
can't see beyond tomorrow. They have never been able to plan ahead, to think
through the consequences of their actions. They're so proud of themselves, and
we're the ones who suffer." He adds: "They can't be gone soon enough."
Phase IV
The difficulties faced by the US in Iraq and Afghanistan have sparked a
revolution in thinking inside the American military. Some of thee leaders of
this revolution are well known: Generals Petraeus, Odierno, McKiernan and
Petraeus counter-insurgency expert David Kilcullen. Petraeus, Odierno,
McKiernan, Kilcullen have focused on what the military calls "Phase IV
Operations" - the post-combat "nation-building" phase of providing stability,
reconstruction and economic programs in post-war societies.
Recently, however, the loudest voices calling for more focus on Phase IV
operations ("in which wars are really won") have come from the US Marine Corps,
and particularly the group of serving and recently retired colonels around
marine commandant James Conway and General James Mattis, the current Joint
Forces Commander. These are the same colonels, primarily from the Marine Corps
3rd Civil Affairs Group (CAG) who first met with Anbar officials in Amman in
2004 and who, as a result, kick-started the Anbar Awakening. Quietly supported
by senior civilian policymakers at the Pentagon, these colonels have been
urging Obama transition officials to retain the myriad "Phase IV" operations in
Iraq and to set aside increased resources for the inter-departmental structures
that have grown up around the effort.
The colonels have a number of allies, including senior Department of Defense
policymakers who have brought together Pentagon, State Department and US Agency
for International Development officials in an effort to coordinate "nation
building" operations.
A core of strong voices, including Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for
Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict, Celeste Ward, and
counter-insurgency wonk Janine Davidson, have emerged as important advocates
for increased "interagency planning that fully integrates civilian and military
activities vital for developing governance structures in a post-conflict
environment", as Ward says.
The new effort has resulted in the creation of the Consortium for Complex
Operations, a kind of internal "super think-tank" headed by Davidson that is
attempting to draw together government thinking on managing post-conflict
societies. Ward and Davidson's initiative was welcomed by the marines, which
strengthened its "Phase IV" offerings when Mattis assigned a senior officer to
the army's recently created Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute at
the Army War College. The marines, the army Peacekeeping and Stability
Operations Institute, and the Consortium - and well-placed defense thinkers at
the Pentagon - have been working to shift government thinking and military
planning on how best to address the challenges facing the US in the Middle
East.
The target of senior Pentagon officials who support "Phase IV" operations has
been Obama transition official Franklin Kramer, a former assistant secretary of
defense for international security affairs. Key defense officials have been
meeting with Kramer in an attempt to convince him to keep in place the Defense
Department's core of "Phase IV" thinkers. The meetings have been going well
because of what one military officer described as "Kramer's conviction that
nation-building is a part of what we should be doing".
Kramer is reportedly intent to overcome the military's natural inclination to
hand off stability operations to other government agencies, like the State
Department, which the military believes lacks the training and staff to take
over post-conflict societies. Kramer's allies in the Pentagon agree, pointing
out that in the wake of World War II, Allied commander Dwight Eisenhower
scoffed at notions that State Department officials could handle occupation
duties in Germany. Instead, he put the country in the hands of senior
commanders and gave them broad authority. The same thing happened in Iraq,
albeit by accident. "We were packed and ready to go," a marine colonel
remembers, "and when we turned around to pass the baton, we looked like the
American relay team at the Olympics - there was no one there to grab it. So we
did it. We had no choice. Hell, there were only two State Department officials
in Anbar at the height of the insurgency, and they were very junior."
Inside the matrix
In a much-read article on the rise of the military's counter-insurgency clique,
reporter Spencer Ackerman noted that while the military has been deeply
influenced by "the rise of the counter-insurgents", their ultimate victory is
not assured. Strong forces, including senior officers, believe that the
military's traditional role should not be expanded to include "non-kinetic
operations" - shorthand for any task that does not include killing the enemy.
"People keep saying, ‘well, the military destabilized Iraq'," a senior officer
says, "and I keep saying, 'damn right' - because that's our job. We destabilize
countries, that's what we do. And after we do it, it ought to be someone else's
job to set it straight. It's not ours."
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