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Adressing The Key Concern |
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Written by JD Johannes
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Thursday, 11 January 2007 |
Midway through his speech, President Bush touched briefly on why past operations to secure Baghdad have failed--because the tactics were wrong.
The tactics of clear, hold, win, won, build, despite being time tested techniques that served the British Army in Malaysia well, fail when all you do is clear.
Further, the clearing process requires that the enemy is actually cleared.
Problem is, with the exception of Battle of Fallujah in 2004, the enemy rarely makes himself known.
In May of 2005, I was embedded with Regimental Combat Team 8 as they cleared the city of Karmah.
But, the enemy countered the Marines' cordon and clear operation with 'Operation Nice Guy.'
ONG is when the enemy does not engage, smiles, waves, and offers Marines tea.
The Marines counter to ONG was targeting. The targeting, had some success, but a few months after the cordon and sweep, Karmah was back to its normal violent self.
Some of the targeted bad guys were tracked down using law enforcement techinques, some were actually where the targeting intel said they would be.
But, not enough were caught, and some were set in the revolving door justice system.
Despite the best efforts of the Marines tasked to hold Karmah, there just were not enough ground pounders to ID, close with, apprehend or kill the enemy under the rules, and what I like to call the procedures of engagement, that resulted in quasi criminal investigation everytime a Marine used force or detained the enemy.
For the surge to work, the revolving door must stop.
(Tomorrow, stopping the revolving door)
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