[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 8 (Tuesday, January 16, 2007)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E110-E112]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             IRAQ INSIGHTS

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. CHET EDWARDS

                                of texas

                    in the house of representatives

                       Tuesday, January 16, 2007

  Mr. EDWARDS. Madam Speaker, distinguished colleagues, as we address 
the complex challenges in Iraq, I think it is important that we hear 
all points of view. For that reason, I am submitting for the 
Congressional Record the firsthand observations of a young Army officer 
who has recently served in Iraq:

                     Iraq: A Soldier's Perspective

       You asked me to put together some thoughts on my experience 
     in Iraq. First, Iraq is a very complex nation with huge 
     differences between regions and locations. The experience of 
     one battalion can be completely different from the experience 
     of another next to it. Every area is different. My views 
     reflect my very narrow vantage point after less than 12 
     months in a tiny corner of a very large country.
       Bottom line up front--I do not believe that we are winning 
     in Iraq. This is not because we screwed up or because we lack 
     the will, the leadership, or the resources to win. I think we 
     have thousands of smart, brave, and talented people who are 
     giving everything they have to make us successful. I think 
     the American people have given us their very best sons and 
     daughters and more than enough money and equipment to achieve 
     our goals. Despite this, it is clear that our current 
     strategy is not likely to produce a secure, stable, and 
     democratic state in the Middle East. I don't know who is to 
     blame for this and I don't really think it matters. Since we 
     are spending the blood and treasure of the American people at 
     an unprecedented rate, we owe it to our nation to figure out 
     a strategy that has some hope of success or to find an 
     alternative end state that protects our long term interest. I 
     don't know what that strategy is, but I can offer some 
     insights from my limited experience. This may help those 
     smarter than me to sort out what might work from what won't 
     work.
       Political Warfare: The hardest thing for us to adjust to 
     once we hit the ground and really tried our hand at this 
     counter-insurgency thing was the importance of personal 
     relationships. They can have a decisive impact on the 
     conflict and it really doesn't matter what scale you are 
     dealing with. Whether it is the relationship between a local 
     shop owner and a squad leader or the relationship between the 
     Brigade Commander and the Provincial Governor, our day to day 
     dealings with the Iraqis and the friendships that we 
     developed with local opinion makers from the village to the 
     national level were the most important contribution that we 
     made to the campaign.
       The Army has a method for designing a good military 
     campaign. You study your enemy, define the source of his 
     strength (his `center of gravity' in military language), 
     figure out the most vulnerable place to attack that strength, 
     and then design a series of missions to achieve your goal. 
     The focus is on defeating the enemy by attacking the source 
     of his strength. We figured out pretty quickly that this kind 
     of strategy would not work. We could have easily expended all 
     of our resources trying to chase down the guys on our `most 
     wanted' list. What we found though is that every time we 
     killed a terrorist (and we killed a lot of terrorists) we 
     created ten more because now his brother, cousin, and 
     uncle all had to seek revenge against us. It just seemed 
     so counter-productive.
       Our real goal was to persuade our Iraqi friends and allies 
     to actively and publicly support us. We wanted them to help 
     us tip the balance of public opinion in our favor. To 
     influence these key individuals, we gave them funding and 
     allowed them to take credit for civil works projects. We 
     provided security when needed and gave them prestige by 
     showing publicly that our commander listened to their advice. 
     We discovered that we were not fighting a military campaign, 
     but a political campaign--not too different from what a small 
     town mayor might do to win re-election back in the U.S.
       I don't want to give the impression that we never had to 
     fight. There was plenty of violence and plenty of people who 
     needed to be killed or captured. But fighting was not our 
     goal and winning a fight did very little to achieve our long-
     term purpose. Our goals were political in nature. Fighting 
     terrorists was only something we did when needed, because it 
     interfered with our political objectives. If we could ignore 
     the terrorists, we were winning. If we had to stop our 
     economic and political activities in order to fight 
     terrorists, they were winning.
       This may seem like a minor difference in viewpoint, but I 
     think it is extremely important. Every region is different, 
     but if a unit goes into Iraq with a focus on killing bad 
     guys, they will find more than enough bad guys to kill. After 
     a year, their region will be as bad as or worse than it was 
     when they arrived. On the other hand, if they focus on waging 
     a political campaign that builds relationships with key 
     opinion makers, and tips public opinion in their favor, they 
     will start to see real, permanent change. Sitting down and 
     eating goat with a prominent and respected sheik can be more 
     valuable than a hundred midnight raids.
       The U.S. Army has done a better job training its combat 
     formations than any army in history. However, we have much to 
     learn as an Army about how to best teach and train this style 
     of counter-insurgency warfare. It is easier to run a rifle 
     range than train a squad leader how to negotiate with an Arab 
     sheik. The Army should accept that counterinsurgency will be 
     a prominent part of our future. We will need to educate and 
     train our future leaders to deal with the inherent 
     unpredictability of human behavior that is so critical in 
     this type of warfare.
       The Army is planning to invest billions of dollars in a new 
     suite of military vehicles that will `eliminate uncertainty' 
     by internetting every weapon on the battlefield to provide 
     near-perfect situational awareness. I'm sure this will have 
     its advantages in the future, but I think this investment is 
     misguided. In a year in Iraq that had no shortage of enemy 
     contact, I never needed to see down the barrel of a tank or 
     Bradley. We had smart, well-trained soldiers who knew when 
     and who to shoot. If leaders started getting involved in that 
     decision, we almost always screwed it up. The guy on the 
     ground knows the situation better than anyone. The more that 
     technology enables his leader to see what he sees, the less 
     his judgment and instinct will be used.
       Iraq has taught us that uncertainty will always be a major 
     factor in warfare. War is a distinctly human phenomenon and 
     man is notoriously unpredictable. Trying to lift the fog of 
     war with information technology is a hopeless task and a 
     waste of resources. We should invest those dollars revamping 
     our officer and NCO education systems to teach young leaders 
     how to handle Iraqi farmers, Afghan mullahs, and Sudanese 
     warlords. A squad leader with a thorough understanding of 
     Shia Islam and the history of Iraq is a lot more valuable 
     than a squad leader with a camera on the end of his rifle. 
     War always has been and always will be about people. If we 
     want to revolutionize our Army we should invest in 
     educating and training our people.
       Enemy Motivation: During the course of the year, I had the 
     chance to talk to a few leaders from the Mahdi militia and a 
     few jihadists from the Sunni side. What amazed me about these 
     guys is the total lack of any collective, long-term vision 
     about why they are fighting us. There is no practical end 
     state that they are trying to achieve. The radicals from both 
     camps are absolutely convinced that they are under obligation 
     from Allah to kill non-Muslims who occupy Arab lands 
     regardless of the long-term consequences for their country. 
     There is no amount of practical reasoning that will change 
     this viewpoint. We have invested millions of dollars in 
     public works projects in some towns to improve the lives of 
     the people only to see citizens from those same towns attack 
     and, in some cases, kill our soldiers. This is not rational 
     behavior.
       I believe that the majority of the insurgents fight us 
     because they want the prestige and respect that other Muslims 
     in their history and in neighboring countries have obtained 
     by fighting foreign occupation. This reality should impact 
     our national policy and our expectations. We have to accept 
     the inconvenient fact that there will always be a significant 
     level of insurgency in Iraq so long as non-Muslim troops 
     occupy the country. No amount of political settlement or 
     economic development will change that. This is something that 
     our Congress and our Administration have to come to terms 
     with. Unfortunately, I don't have any brilliant ideas on how 
     to deal with this, but I am convinced that the insurgency in 
     Iraq will not end one day before the last American soldier 
     leaves the country. This is a reality that we must accept and 
     must plan for.
       Iraqi Security Forces: The Iraqi security forces (Army and 
     Police) that I worked with ranged from superb to completely 
     incompetent. Like any organization, the character of the unit 
     was largely determined by the character of the commanding 
     officer. Many were excellent (the best officers, in my 
     experience, came from Saddam's old Army). Most officers did a 
     great job when facing Sunni-based insurgents. In fact, we had 
     to keep a close eye on most units to make sure they were not 
     too heavy-handed against the Sunnis. When we dealt with the 
     Shia, especially the Mahdi militia, things got a lot more 
     complicated. Many officers were reluctant to fight the Shia 
     militias because they had a well-justified fear for the 
     security of their family. I have seen senior Iraqi officers 
     flat refuse to follow American soldiers in pursuit of Shia 
     insurgents--even when those insurgents just killed their own 
     soldiers.
       An Iraqi officer in either the police or the Army has to 
     walk a very fine line. If he does not cooperate with the 
     Americans, he risks losing the money, equipment, and prestige 
     that come from American support. If he cooperates completely, 
     especially in the pursuit of Shia targets, he is labeled a 
     traitor, and his family and career can be in great danger. I 
     have seen members of the National Assembly and Provincial 
     Governors place tremendous pressure on police and Army 
     commanders to get them to look the other way when it came to 
     Shia militia activity. The few ISF commanders who are truly 
     `independent' are constantly under threat of being fired or 
     worse. Most commanders manage to survive by establishing a 
     delicate truce with the Shia radicals. They openly

[[Page E111]]

     profess support for the Americans and talk about fighting the 
     militia in public. In private, they pass information about 
     our operations and provide early warning to the militias 
     the minute we leave the front gate of our camp. This is 
     not speculation--my unit witnessed this many times.
       I will never understand why the Coalition forfeited control 
     of the hiring and firing of Iraqi Army and Police commanders 
     over to a government that was so deeply divided in its 
     loyalty. The resulting divided loyalty within the leadership 
     of the ISF is probably the greatest threat to Coalition 
     interests today. I doubt we can reverse this, but I can 
     assure you that as long as the Iraqi government decides who 
     commands and who doesn't in the ISF, they will be unable to 
     deal with the Shia militias in any meaningful way. The 
     Coalition, through our advisory teams should exert a greater 
     degree of influence over the selection of Iraqi battlefield 
     commanders. This will have a bigger impact on the quality of 
     the Iraqi security forces than anything else we can do.
       Key-Man Strategy: To find an honest, courageous, and 
     liberal-minded Iraqi within the security forces is absolute 
     pure gold. To have one as the police chief or military 
     commander for your area is every US commander's dream. If 
     these guys are so important to our strategy, then their 
     selection, promotion, and protection should be a central 
     component of our campaign plan. I think the Coalition has, in 
     a good faith attempt to bolster the Iraqi ministries, stayed 
     too aloof and uninvolved from these vital appointments. The 
     Mahdi militia and Badr Corps, who do not share our sense of 
     fair play, have filled the void and are aggressively filling 
     the senior ranks of the ISF with their most loyal supporters.
       I would suggest that the Coalition embark on a ``Key Man 
     Strategy'' where great attention is devoted to the character 
     and trustworthiness of all Security Force commanders down to 
     the battalion and district police chief level. Engagement 
     reports should be collected and assessments done so that the 
     highest levels of the Coalition and Iraqi government have a 
     fair and independent assessment of all the key battlefield 
     commanders in the ISF.
       Because of the convoluted and duplicitous nature of Arab 
     politics, senior Iraqi leaders have great difficulty getting 
     accurate information on the quality of their leadership at 
     the tactical level. Because of this information vacuum, it is 
     often difficult for a minister to say no when a group of 
     `concerned citizens' from the Mahdi militia approach and ask 
     him to replace a particularly effective police chief. If the 
     Coalition leaders who regularly work with the ministries had 
     a more detailed assessment of these key men and their 
     capabilities and limitations, then they could better advise 
     the Iraqi leaders who are making the tough calls. We can also 
     exert pressure to prevent attempts to fire independent 
     leaders and replace them with militia supporters.
       Entire provinces can be won or lost in the selection of 
     Iraqi brigade commanders and Provincial police chiefs. The 
     Coalition will probably never regain the exclusive right to 
     select and remove these men, but we must devote enough 
     attention to this process in order to influence it.
       Militias: We will never reach any kind of acceptable 
     political settlement as long as the Coalition and the Iraqi 
     Government allow legitimate political parties to hold seats 
     in the National Assembly while they finance and maintain 
     military auxiliary wings that attack and kill Iraqi and 
     American soldiers. These parties have enough clout in PM 
     Maliki's administration to effectively block any major 
     military operation against the militias. This is an 
     impossible situation.
       I don't have the expertise to comment on whether or not a 
     temporary `troop surge' is necessary. I can say, however, 
     that a troop surge is pointless if we cannot set the 
     political conditions beforehand that allow us to act freely 
     against the militia. The Administration should seriously 
     consider the legal implications of declaring the Jaysh al-
     Mahdi (Mahdi militia) a designated hostile force. This 
     declaration gives local commanders much greater latitude to 
     deal with this threat and will eventually force the 
     organization to go completely underground. I am not a 
     military lawyer so I don't know all the implications of such 
     a move but I think it bears a hard look. We should also look 
     for ways to continue to publicly expose the connections 
     between the legitimate political activities of parties like 
     the OMS (Office to the Martyr Sadr) and the brutal acts 
     carried out by the Mahdi militia. This technique has shown 
     some success in counter-insurgencies in the past because it 
     drives a wedge between the political and military wings of 
     the organization.
       Because both militias are so tightly associated with the 
     police and army, they receive a lot of their funding and 
     weapons from these sources. The American taxpayer remains the 
     greatest funding source for the Mahdi militia. We have fought 
     militia members in police uniforms carrying weapons that were 
     issued from U.S. warehouses. We will not be able to cut that 
     funding source until the Iraqi government purges its senior 
     ranks of militia loyalists.
       The second biggest source of funding, in my experience, is 
     Iraq's foreign neighbors. Iraqis tend to be very 
     nationalistic so the idea of foreign neighbors providing 
     weapons and money to the militia is very distasteful to most. 
     I don't understand why we have not exploited this weakness. 
     Foreign funding and training of the militias remains an open 
     secret within the Coalition. Why isn't this front page news 
     in the Arab world? A public exposure of extensive militia 
     cooperation with Iraq's neighbors could mortally wound the 
     militias by making them appear to be a tool of would-be 
     foreign occupiers.
       The Talent Drain: Every few years, someone makes a big deal 
     about all the junior officers leaving the Army. In most 
     cases, this is a natural part of the process and something 
     that the Army can easily compensate for. We need fewer Majors 
     than we do Captains. From my limited perspective, however, I 
     am very concerned this time around. The Army is enduring a 
     brutal deployment cycle (12 months on, 12 months off for many 
     soldiers) with no end in sight. Because of this, we are 
     bleeding talent at an unprecedented rate. Of the hundred or 
     so junior officers in my brigade, I know of only a handful 
     that intend to stay in long enough to command a company. In 
     most cases, it is the most talented officers who are the 
     first to go. I hope that our unit is not typical of the rest 
     of the Army.
       It is difficult to overstate the importance of good company 
     commanders to the health of an Army- especially an Army 
     fighting counter-insurgency. Company commanders are the ones 
     who decide every day what risks are worth taking and what are 
     not. They lead most of our most important negotiations with 
     local leaders. They chose who the squad leaders and platoon 
     sergeants will be who lead America's young men in battle. Our 
     company commanders in Iraq made life and death decisions 
     every day. We have to have top-notched junior officers to 
     fill these positions or the Army and our expedition in Iraq 
     are both in great peril.
       This is not just a long-term problem. This could have 
     serious short-term consequences in Iraq. If we don't have our 
     best talent commanding our combat company formations on the 
     ground in Iraq, any strategy that we try to implement over 
     the next few years will be doomed to failure.
       Super-FOBs: When we first arrived in Iraq, I was surprised 
     at the size of some of the larger American bases like Balad 
     and Camp Victory in Baghdad. They are small American cities 
     filled with thousands of soldiers who have never left the 
     wire or met an Iraqi. They are guarded by an entire combat 
     battalion because of their size.
       Logistics bases are necessary and there is a certain 
     economy that comes with consolidating camps but I think we 
     have lost our balance somewhere. I would estimate that 
     between 10 to 20 percent of the soldiers serving in Iraq 
     actively engage the Iraqi people, aid in reconstruction, or 
     provide security for Iraqi neighborhoods. The rest are 
     involved in logistics, camp management, and staff functions.
       Someone, of course, has to deliver the mail and the 
     American Army in Iraq is a logistical marvel that few armies 
     in the world could replicate. However, the next time you hear 
     that we have 150,000 `boots on the ground', I think it is 
     important to recognize that probably somewhere less than 
     30,000 soldiers actually carry on their mission outside of 
     these huge sanctuaries that we have constructed. When you 
     compare this with an Iraqi population of around 27 million, 
     you can see how daunting this task is.
       I am not suggesting that we should send all the mail clerks 
     on patrol. Some units have tried this and found that both 
     their logistics and operations have suffered for it. I do 
     believe that consolidation of bases into large super-FOBs 
     leads to a certain isolationism that causes one to forget why 
     we are all there in the first place. We have division and 
     Corps staffs that approach 1,000 soldiers in size. These 
     large organizations consume a great deal of talent. Some of 
     our best war-fighters, men with extensive combat experience, 
     spend their year in Iraq planning the construction of the new 
     camp dining facility. Somehow, we have lost our balance.
       This same tendency toward consolidation has affected our 
     advisory teams for the Iraqi Army. The unit advisory teams 
     that work with the Iraqi Army are our main effort and our 
     best hope for a successful outcome to this fight. Very few of 
     the advisory teams, however, actually live with their Iraqi 
     battalion or brigade. Most teams live on the nearest large 
     American camp and commute to work when conditions permit. I 
     know of one team that had a two-hour commute on very 
     dangerous road from their camp to their Iraqi unit. After 
     they lost a soldier to an IED on that road, they practically 
     stopped visiting the unit all together. By the time we 
     redeployed, that Iraqi unit was all but an auxiliary wing of 
     the Mahdi militia. I am not sure if the advisory team could 
     have stopped this, but their absence certainly helped to 
     accelerate it.
       There is no replacement for boots on the ground. The more 
     we consolidate troops into large base camps and allocate our 
     best talent to internal maintenance and support functions 
     instead of winning the fight, the harder it is for us to 
     influence the population and, when necessary, impose our 
     will.
       As a final point, I think it is important to step back and 
     look at this from a historical perspective. Despite all our 
     warts, the American Army is doing something pretty amazing in 
     Iraq. For three years, American soldiers, many still in 
     their teens, all volunteers, have faced an enemy that 
     refuses to accept any moral limits on warfare. We have 
     seen the enemy dress in women's clothing, use Iraqi 
     children as human shields, hide weapons in their mosques, 
     and torture the innocent and defenseless. In spite of all 
     this, our young soldiers have shown enormous restraint and 
     even greater compassion. I have

[[Page E112]]

     heard Iraqi interpreters marvel that a squad of soldiers 
     would capture a man who, only minutes before, tried to 
     kill them, and bring him unharmed to the detention 
     facility on our camp. This kind of mercy is unheard of in 
     the Arab culture.

  Unfortunately, this story will not make the headlines back home. But 
this is the story of the American soldier in Iraq. It is a story of 
unprecedented courage, restraint, and compassion for a foreign people. 
It is a story of the strong trying, against all odds, to protect the 
weak and defenseless from a dark and hopeless future. I have no idea 
how the American expedition in Iraq will end. I doubt it will end well. 
But I do hope that the courage and civility of the American soldiers 
who fought there will not be forgotten both here and in Iraq.

                          ____________________