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How To Win In Iraq: What the Troops Are Saying

Written by Nate on March 3rd, 2007

Today I met Major Eric England, a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan. He has a new book out called The Troops Need You America. You can check out his website at www.troopsneedyou.com. In his book, he outlines keys to winning the war according to the troops on the ground. This guy really impressed me with his knowledge and experience. The ideas and steps he lays out have come directly from troops on the ground. There are some things that the Generals are not picking up on that seem common knowledge to the troops on the ground. For example, allowing the troops to have more freedom to communicate with the locals and altering predictable patterns in operations.

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1 Comments so far ↓

  1. Mar
    4
    11:42
    PM
    Mike

    5. Seize the smart offensive by reducing predictable patterns and integrating with local forces to conduct offensive operations that hunt, rather than chase, the adversary.

    An offensive mindset is lacking in military leadership in Iraq. New leadership in Baghdad should ban presence patrols, a legacy from Bosnia involving troops driving around visibly hoping to deter violence. The actual result, though, is to offer our troops as targets while keeping them too busy for offensive operations. Leadership should require offensive hunting missions that are tactically-initiated and intelligence-driven. There are many pockets of excellence, or areas where U.S. forces have successfully applied this approach in Iraq, but the enemy consistently shifts operations to nearby areas and overall casualties continue to climb because the model is not applied broadly.

    General Odierno should tell his divisions to work with Iraqi forces to reverse the growing number of casualties by reducing insurgent attacks by one-third in the next six weeks. They could likely succeed if higher echelons support tactical units and battalions are allowed to take the lead—but not if they continue to be blocked from pursuing new approaches while their time, energy and resources are sapped by presence patrols from the last war.

    Sending more troops for surge operations in Baghdad will help if these operational changes are made. An unchanged status quo, however, means sending more troops may just offer more targets to our enemy.

    We must engage insurgent networks offensively, starting at the tactical level. As the White House recently said, the weapons coming from Iran are much more deadly than the average roadside bomb. If all bombs were like those, the results would be devastating. The threat will grow until engaged offensively.

    This is a must read portion of the essay. If this, and this alone were implemented we will win within the year in both Iraq and Afghanistan. In point of fact this would have won us Vietnam as well.

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