[R-G] U.S. Military takes lessons from Iraq 'insurgent' war

[Anthony Fenton]

from the March 20, 2008 edition -
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0320/p13s01-usmi.html
U.S. Military takes lessons from Iraq 'insurgent' war
As the fight in Iraq drives fundamental changes to the military, it is  
also forcing a debate on how far those changes should go.
By Gordon Lubold | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Washington

Five years of war in Iraq have emphasized how US forces need to be  
adept at fighting so-called irregular warfare: One moment, troops are  
conducting full-combat operations, while the next, they're handing out  
candy and soccer balls.

But as the fight in Iraq – and in Afghanistan and elsewhere – drives  
fundamental changes to the military, it is also forcing a debate on  
how far those changes should go, especially as the Pentagon looks  
ahead to potential future conflicts.

At the center of this debate is a proposal to create a permanent force  
of 20,000 new "combat advisors." Such a force would position the Army  
to better train indigenous forces to take on counterinsurgencies for  
themselves. The idea behind it is that today's wars are not fought  
with tanks and bombers so much as with hearts and minds, and many  
officers believe the Army needs to train a generation of soldiers as  
"warrior diplomats."

In fact, the reluctance to view Iraq as an insurgency and the  
institutional inability, initially, to deploy forces to fight an  
insurgency contributed to the current situation in Iraq, many officers  
say.

But the question becomes: How many eggs should the military put in  
this counterinsurgency basket?

Officials in the Bush administration have long argued that success in  
Iraq and Afghanistan will come when Iraqi security forces or the  
Afghan national Army or police can take responsibility for their own  
country's security. The proposal for a permanent adviser corps comes  
from noted counterinsurgency experts including Lt. Col. John Nagl, who  
says it bolsters US efforts to train such advisers – not only for  
current conflicts, but for other insurgencies the United States is  
very likely to confront.

"The need for well-trained, professional combat advisors is unlikely  
to diminish in the foreseeable future," Colonel Nagl writes in an  
essay published by the Center for a New American Security, a think  
tank in Washington.

Yet building an adviser corps essentially thumbs its nose at the  
notion that the US will engage in fighting a conventional army like  
China's, which raises hackles across the military establishment. It  
also focuses on the forces of the Army and Marine Corps far more so  
than those of the Navy or Air Force, which some officers believe are  
still structured to fight more conventional threats.

However, even those who believe the US will continue to fight  
insurgencies take issue with establishing a permanent adviser corps.  
They argue that such efforts essentially prepare the military to fight  
the most recent war it fought.

"We are right now in danger of overlearning some of our lessons and  
already we're preparing to fight our last war," says Roger Carstens,  
who recently retired as a lieutenant colonel with a career in Army  
Special Forces.

Some are voicing concerns that the military should be prepared for a  
"full spectrum" of operations. Creating a force essentially dedicated  
to training foreign militaries swings the pendulum too far to one  
side, they say.

Instead, the focus should be on instilling multiple capabilities  
within the small, tactical units, say critics. They caution against  
dedicating a special force of soldier-advisers to a specific cause,  
which they say essentially creates "two armies."

"The best hedge against strategic risk is to have multidimensional,  
multifaceted small units and individuals," says Robert Scales Jr., a  
retired two-star general who at one point led the Army War College at  
Carlisle Barracks, Pa. "Squads and platoons: That's the building block  
that will defeat radical Islamicists over the long term."

Senior Army officials, including Gen. George Casey, the Army's chief  
of staff, have not signed on to the idea of an adviser corps, opting  
instead to create new brigade combat teams capable of more  
conventional warfare. Still, they've begun making changes: The Army  
recently released a new field manual that puts "stability operations"  
on par with conventional military operations – a nod to those who  
believe the US will primarily be engaged in fighting insurgencies, not  
big land armies.

"For a lot of my career, the pattern of the enemy was quite obvious,"  
Army Maj. Gen. David Fastabend, a chief strategist for the Army, told  
a group of Pentagon reporters recently. He calls the new manual  
"revolutionary" even if the concepts are well established. "Now in an  
irregular conflict, you don't have that pattern so much," he says.

The new field manual was last revamped just prior to September 2001.

But the Army is not yet ready to embrace the idea of building the  
20,000-strong Army corps that officers like Nagl are advocating,  
General Fastabend says.

"It's still a matter of discussion," he says, noting that it is  
unclear how long the Army would need that kind of capability. "One of  
the challenges of working in irregular warfare environment is, it's  
not regular, and the ability to forecast is difficult."