Classical Values :: Iraq War Fighting Strategy

April 11, 2007

Iraq War Fighting Strategy

I want to focus here on the war in Iraq and the application of standard American military strategy to the fighting in Iraq. I want to do this based on the lessons learned from the Vietnam War. It seems to me the mistakes we are making in Iraq are similar to the mistakes we made in Vietnam as described in Col. Harry Summer's book On Strategy.

Here is a list of the military principles from Field Manual 100-1, The Army.

Objective
Offensive
Mass
Economy of Force
Manuver
Unity of Command
Security
Surprise
Simplicity

In subsequent posts I intend to cover one or more topics until I get to the end of the list. Since the Objective is the foundation for all the rest of the topics that will be covered in a post of its own.

I present this list as a kind of warm up so you can get oriented to what is coming next.

Cross Posted at Power and Control and at The Astute Bloggers

posted by Simon on 04.11.07 at 12:18 PM

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Comments

We may be making the same mistakes, I am not sure. I do recommend two books to help assess our situation: Fighting the War On Terror by James S. Corum and The Sling and the Stone by Thomas Hammes.

Leonidas Hoplite · April 11, 2007 01:57 PM

If you are not already familar with it, you might want to review the USMC Small Wars Manual. It was created in the late 1930s and based upons the Corpse extensive experience with counterinsurgency during the 19th and early 20th century.

http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/swm/index.htm

It seems most of these lessons were lost during the Vietnam conflict.

ThomasD · April 11, 2007 03:13 PM

One must also remember that in trying to apply the past lessons learned, that they must be adapted to local conditions. So for an area like Iraq, looking at de Atkine's Why Arabs Lose Wars is essential, as the highly factionated populations of the Middle East do not have some of the coherency of Latin America and other places that the USMC Small Wars Manual was created around.

For those terrorists basing their view of the world on the fantastic, of which almost all of the Islamic variety fit, but also organizations like Aum Shinrikyo and most other terrorist/death-cults, one must take into consideration their belief structures as Lee Harris points out in al Qaeda's Fantasy Ideology. That also helps to explain a lot of the outlook of Iran and other States based on ideas not tied to the mechanics of the real world. Chillingly so, actually.

A good background on how force structure for the modern era was first encoded by the US Army is in their Center for Military History, which goes over some of the historical record and examines how and why force structure was implemented the way it was.

Also one must keep in mind that the USMC was *not* successful in all Small Wars, and the overview of the Haiti operation 1915-34 is one where the things *not to do* should have been learned not only by the military but by the POLITICAL class, and was *not*. Many of the same problems that led to the Haiti fiasco also are seen again in Viet Nam. It isn't like Viet Nam stood alone, and many of the National causes of failure had shown up previously. By being unable to get those lessons learned back *into* the political structure by the military, the Nation was left without good outlook on things. That is one of the cases where the Armed Forces as a living, historical organization needs to re-impart those lessons back *to* the Nation's political leaders. A lesson learned and unheeded to this day.

ajacksonian · April 12, 2007 10:29 AM