A new evaluation of the heavy-combat phase of the Iraq War that is well worth seeing is posted now on the Web site of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. At the link, you have to select "latest from CSBA" and then select "Operation Iraqi Freedom: A First Blush Assessment" and then select it again to get the PDF file.
The paper is by Andrew Krepinevich, who I mentioned in a previous post as an Iraq hawk who has long been critical of the Army's overwhelming focus on conventional warfare ("mid-level conflict"). He observes that the Army performed extremely well in the conventional war phase of the conflict. But, quoting General Peter Pace saying that Saddam Hussein was "the world's worst general," he also notes that the Iraqi Army performed very badly.
In that connection, he makes the interesting observation that the authoritarian governments in other Arab countries may have created similar "structural and cultural" problems to those Iraq's army experienced in the conflict this year.
Many Arab leaders, such as Saddam Hussein, have been more concerned with avoiding a coup than with military effectiveness. Consequently, commanders are chosen more for their political reliability than their military competence. Arab society is also relatively hierarchical. The effect has been to create a gap between the officer corps and their troops. With few notable exceptions, Arab militaries have lacked a strong noncommissioned officer corps, which in the US military forms an indispensable interface between officers and their troops. The American military culture encourages officers to lead from the front, where they can react quickly to changing circumstances on the dynamic modern battlefield. Arab officers typically lead from the rear. Whereas American culture values self-initiative and "Yankee ingenuity," authoritarian regimes such as Saddam Hussein’s Iraq view with suspicion those who act independently of direction from the center. Given these factors and the growing compression of time on the modern battlefield, is it any wonder that the Americans, with their vastlysuperior technology, were able to rout the Iraqis not once, but twice?
(Cont. in Part 2)
1 comment:
Thanks for the posts; very insightful. You might be interested in the Wounded Warriors Project. It's a nonprofit organization dedicated to raising awareness for U.S. troops severely wounded in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. It really puts a face on the cost of this conflict. Here's a link:
http://www.woundedwarriorproject.org/aarwebshow
Thanks,
Jeff
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