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"We didn't train to re-fight the battle of Fallujah, we trained for the battle of Stalingrad....I wish we had spent three months with some U.S. Marshals instead."
That was the lament of an infantry commander I spoke with in Iraq. His Marines were trained and eager for force on force operations, a classic fire-fight, but in Iraq, the enemy was not willing return the favor. Instead, they spent 4 months in fruitless battalion sized operations and 3 effective months as the Sheriff of small villages.
The three months as Sheriff were effective in terms of enemy killed, detained and weapons captured.
Since the dawn of organized warfare, dirt has been the primary metric of success.
Or more precisely the amount of dirt, sand asphalt or saltwater you control was the metric to determine--in the end--success or failure.
Spatial territory makes sense as a measure of end gain success, but in modern 4th Generation warfare, it is not a sound basis for tactics.
In 633 A.D., the Muslim General Khalid bin Al-Waleed led the Muslim invasion of what is now Kuwait and Iraq.
Dubbed 'The Sword of Allah' by Mohammed, Khalid's cavalry moved North through mesopotamia seeking out, locating and destroying Persian armies.
In Khalid's time, the Muslim army would often engage in champion combat, as the two armies faced each other across the scorched plain.
But the modern Muslim fighter knows no such chivalry, perfering instead to fight with sucide bombers, missile sites located in Mosques and remotely detonated explosive devices.
Fighting "in the way of Allah" has certainly changed over the centuries.
If the modern Muslim army in Iraq were to fight in old fashioned way of Allah, as Khalid understood it, every engagement would resemble a force on force clash, similar to the Battle of Fallujah in November of 2004.
But the modern Islamic Army in the land of two rivers does not fight to expel the infidels by force. It fights to remove the infidels by Congressional vote. It fights its apostate fellow Muslims not house by house, block by block, or city by city, but person by person, news clip by news clip through bombings, kidnappings and assassinations.
If the enemy is not concerned with territory, why should we be concerned with territory?
In classical guerilla warfare, sobotage and terrorism are the first stages of creating a revolutionary movement--a war for national revolution.
In Iraq, terrorism has not led to the second phase, a standing guerilla army that holds territory, which means it is not capable of the third phase of classical guerilla warfare, the final battles in which the regime is overthrown.
But in 4th Generation Warfare, the second and third phases are irrelevant because the goal is not overwhelm by force, but to convince policy makers through violence--terrorism.
Since the technique is terrorism, and since terrorism does not require territory, only a garage workshop, territory as a metric would require the coalition to cover not just every square mile, village or city block, but literally every house. This is impossible.
A 20,000 infantry surge still cannot hold down every building in Iraq. And even if it could, a bomb can be built in the open desert, the back of a van, or under a palm tree. As long as bombs are built and detonated, the jihadists will be able to place pressure on their targets--members of Congress and the voters in the U.S.
The most effective operations I witnessed in Iraq had little to do with dirt and territory. They were focused on people. Spatial territory was only used as a form of organization and then loosly.
The average General or Colonel in the U.S. military has never been in a gunfight, has never spent a night outside the wire and has never had to track down a known terrorist.
History is filled with great Generals who never commanded troops in combat until they achieved the rank of General, so knowing how to conduct yourself in a shoot out is not required--helpful, but not required--in normal maneuver warfare. But this is not maneuver warfare.
By contrast, the vast majority of Police Chiefs--if not all--started out a beat cops and have been in the same situations as those they command.
Police do not operate in maneuvers and territory is only used for organizational purposes and even then loosly.
Police focus on people. The develop intelligence (witnesses, confidential informants, snitches) and target individual or groups of perpetrators.
Police investigations are built on gathering evidence and information, recruiting snitches and flipping associates the suspects.
If Staff Officers spent more time outside the wire, they would see that spatially oriented battalion or regimental operations are often fruitless.
But an infantry company stationed in a loosly defined geographical area, where the Captain has a broad mission not just to patrol the area, but to police the area, can be very effective.
But the other difference between military operations and police tactics differ is time.
A criminal investigation into an auto theft or burglary ring may take months. A criminal investigation into organized crime may take years--with the same detectives and agents working the case.
A police officer may patrol the same precinct or set of city blocks his entire career--20 years.
The military in Iraq move in and out at least every 12 months.
Add in the language barrier, and you can easily see how the structure of the military has made it next to impossible to root out the jihadists in Iraq.
Effective goals of the surge--and this probably is the metric the officers are considering--is not the number of neighborhoods cleared and held, but the reduction in the number of kidnappings, assassinations, car bombings, burglaries, extortions, ransoms and general crimes. These would be downward metrics.
Upward metrics would be tons of weapons and explosives seized, confirmed jihadists captured or killed and the size and accuracy of intelligence databases pushed down to the platoon level.
If jihadists and other criminals are captured or killed, the metrics should follow.
For the metric to shift from dirt to people Colonels and Generals will have to be able to do something that is very hard for humans--give up control.
Captains, Lieutentants and Staff Sgts. will have to be given the lattitude to make large decisions without the approval of a higher HQ.
Squads, Platoons and infantry Companies will have to given a large degree of authority not just to patrol an area, but to actively and aggressively take on people and networks. An they may have to use unorthodox tactics--such as patrolling in a Lada, or Bongo Truck or BMW. Grunts may shed some, if not all of their uniforms for reconiassance work. Small units will have to be given and trained in the use of equipment to clone cell phones and intercept signals. Detailed census will have to be conducted. Informants will have to be paid, bribes may have to be paid, complex relationships with good guys who are not so good will have to be allowed.
And most importantly, a cadre of the best NCOs and Officers may have to stay in that area for two or more years to hold on to the knowledge and relationship base with people.
The buildings and dirt may stay the same no matter who is patrolling them, but the trust of the people who lived there before we arrived and will live there after we leave requires a relationship with a person.
The enemy will not give us the luxury of a face to face fight. He will not fight us for a piece of dirt because he does not have to--he gets the piece of dirt when we leave. All he wants is to hasten the departure.
If the metric is dirt, we will have to stay in Iraq, en mass perpetually. If the metric is people, we can, over the course of time, truly hold the dirt.
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