Lagniappe

 

 

Josh Manchester : Go Native

 

A super-secret group of military officers studying Iraq found its conclusions leaked to the press last week. The Washington Post reported that the group has developed three options, "Go big," "Go long," or "Go home." The group is said to be recommending "going long."

"The group has devised a hybrid plan that combines part of the first option with the second one -- 'Go Long' -- and calls for cutting the U.S. combat presence in favor of a long-term expansion of the training and advisory efforts. Under this mixture of options, which is gaining favor inside the military, the U.S. presence in Iraq, currently about 140,000 troops, would be boosted by 20,000 to 30,000 for a short period, the officials said.

"The purpose of the temporary but notable increase, they said, would be twofold: To do as much as possible to curtail sectarian violence, and also to signal to the Iraqi government and public that the shift to a 'Go Long' option that aims to eventually cut the U.S. presence is not a disguised form of withdrawal."

Here's my own contribution to these discussions. Why not go native? The constituent parts to this plan are:

1. Dramatically expand the training and advisory efforts. Expand their numbers, funding, and facilities. This doesn't differ much from "Go long," but wait there's more...

2. Create a crash program to develop a massive Arabic linguistic capability within the US military. This is the United States. We put men on the moon. Why don't we train 20,000 or more American military personnel proficient in Arabic in the next 12 months? Sure, it's a difficult language. But nobody has to be able to translate the Koran in order to lead an attack, plan a patrol, or otherwise advise an Iraqi force. Have the president sign an executive order temporarily federalizing the Arabic departments of every US university that has them. The professors will keep the same pay, but it'll be on Uncle Sam's tab and all of their students for the next two years will be military personnel. If our captains, lieutenants, sergeants and corporals have 30 days of Arabic for 12 hours a day with native speaking instructors before deploying, it will get us where we need to be.

3. Give Maliki 60 days to remove the Shi'ite militias from positions of influence in the government. If he asks for help of some kind in doing so, provide it. Give him one last chance to prove that stopping the sectarian killing is more important than satisfying those who hunger for it.

4. If he can't do it, then declare Iraq's security forces to be in receivership. What does this mean? It means that the security forces of Iraq no longer answer to the Iraqi government, they answer to the US military. The government will still exist. It will still be a democracy. But it will temporarily lose control of its military. After doing this, purge the Iraqi forces of those loyal to Shi'ite militias.

5. Create combined US-Iraqi forces. Here's where the go native part really kicks in. Forget about standing our forces down as the Iraqi forces stand up. It seems to actually be working in Anbar province, but the American public and political class don't believe it. Instead, create a situation such that the American forces and the Iraqi forces are one and the same. American forces in small numbers live, eat, sleep, fight and die with their Iraqi counterparts. It will keep the Iraqis honest about not killing each other in wanton bloodshed. And it will earn incredible benefits for the Americans in terms of intelligence gained and cultural lessons learned. This doesn't just apply to the military. It applies to the police, the border patrol, heck, even the Iraqi boy scouts if there's a local chapter.

6. Redeploy as many FOBBITS as possible. What's a Fobbit? A FOB is a forward operating base, and a fobbit is the derogatory term used by combat arms troops to refer to the support personnel who inhabit such gargantuan bases. This is not to look down upon the accomplishments of support personnel. But as much as possible, integrate the logistics of the forces that have gone native with the Iraqis with the Iraqi logistics. This should allow at least a portion of the massive numbers of support troops to come home, reducing our overall presence in the country, and showing a metric of progress to the American people.

And so, there you have it. These changes would be dramatic. It takes guts to tell a sovereign government that we're relieving it of its military. But by going native, the US can destroy or neutralize the Shi'ite militias; restore confidence in the Iraqi armed forces; increase our language and cultural proficiency, which is a huge force multiplier; and over time we can gradually cede the military back to the Iraqi government. Just for good measure, it would probably be a good idea to surge a large number of troops in to tamp down violence in Baghdad while the go native plan gets ramped up. But within 6 to 12 months, the US presence would be smaller, and more effective, violence in Baghdad will be much lower, and the insurgency will be even more beleaguered than it is now.

Iraq is too important to just leave in pieces for its neighbors to do what they will with it. The US political class is currently misreading the US election, thinking that it provides a mandate for withdrawal. Instead, it was a message of general discontent. It's time for dramatic changes. Why not go native?

Josh Manchester is an officer in the US Marine reserves and a TCSDaily Contributing Writer. His blog is www.theadventuresofchester.com. Petroleumworld not necessarily share these views.

This commentary was originally published by TCSDaily, on 11/28/2006. Petroleumworld reprint this article in the interest of our readers.

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Petroleumworld News 12/12/06

Copyright©2006 Josh Manchester. All rights reserved

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