Any smart man can catalogue the errors of others.  A wise man can learn from those errors.

It takes a truly brilliant man to overcome those errors.

Dr. Joseph Collins, a retired Army Colonel, former Deputy Ass. Sec. Def. and now professor at the National Defense University has published a paper that many smart men already have published. 

He even looks at ways to possibly learn from those errors.

And for that he will earn much ink and air-time . 

But I am not a pessimist looking backward.  Or an optimist looking forward.

My concern about the war in Iraq is the here and now--how to overcome the errors the pessimists cannot see beyond to get the result the optimists hope for.

The pessimists will load Mr. Collins' paper into the chamber of their rhetorical rifles and fire at any loosely identified optimist target.

The optimists will point to the success of the surge--using it as body armor.

But there has been very, very little written or studied that explains how and why the surge worked.  Why General Petraeus' manual FM3-24 works when properly implemented.

I am fascinated by the solutionists.  Those who have the discipline to not only create a plan--as Petraeus, Amos and Nagl did--but then execute the plan as well as Petraeus has.

The most important study and scholarship of the Iraq war should be going on now--to observe and record how Captains and Lt. Colonels have flipped tribes from backing insurgents to backing the coalition and the micro-tactics at the squad, platoon and company level have changed the face of war in a year.

That work is not being performed by scholars or think tank fellows.

It is being done by writers like Michael Yon, Bill Roggio, Jeff Emanuel, Bill Ardolino & Michael Totten.

Counterinsurgency is not a war fought by Brigades or Regiments.  It is fought by Captains, Lt. Colonels, Lieutenants and Sergeants.

The goal of all warfare is to get one human or group of humans to do what you want them to do by any means necessary.

In Counterinsurgency, where you are not dealing with a nation or even a discernable opposing force, it falls to getting individual people to do what you want.  And the means to that end involves dealing with people and those dealings are often about relationships.

How a Captain deals with tribal leaders.  How a Lt. Colonel deals with a shady police chief.  How a Sergeant deals with the head of a household.

Mao said the insurgent swims among the people like a fish.

Defeating an insurgent means soldiers and Marines must also swim with the people and interact with the people.

The largest strategic shifts in an area of operations can result from the most seemingly benign of tactical shifts--like patrolling on foot instead of in a Humvee.

Driving in a Humvee is not swimming among the people like a fish--is it riding in a boat above the water.

In Iraq the first question I ask a Battalion Commander is the size of his census data base.  In places where the war seemed to be won--they had every resident of the village in a database along with digital photos.

Knowing the fish you are swimming with makes it very easy to spot the predator.

The places where they had no census data--the soldiers often described their tour as 'driving around waiting to get blown up.'

The solution to the IED/EFP threat in most places was not more armor or a technological gadget but two feet on the ground.

The most effective way to gather intel in Baghdad--officers give out business cards in Arabic with their cell phone number on it.

These micro-tactics which have led to the successes of the surge are largely unknown.

Which is why I would rather be a solutionist, studying what works, catalouging the execution of brilliant plan on the dusty streets and asphalt--overcoming the previous and repeated errors.

The media and the left will note Mr. Collins' work because it looks backward and only to a hypothetical future.

In that regard they are merely smart and occasionally wise.

I would rather observe and tell the stories of the brilliant .

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