[Wade1066]

According to Mr. West, the US military should not be the primary implement of foreign policy. During war this makes no sense to me because Soldiers are the most capable executors of established policy; they are politics manifested! The Civilian lacks this capacity on the ground during conditions of armed conflict.

When I deployed to Iraq as a member of a land-owning Artillery platoon operating as motorized infantry, my intent was to defeat, or at least disrupt, the (local) insurgency. Upon arrival I identified two methods we could use to achieve this. The first was to develop and provide local services, i.e. to help "build the nation." The second was to influence local political conditions using dollars, i.e. to "control" the population. In both cases the result was the same, the separation of the population from the insurgency, which facilitated disruption or defeat. I believe Bing mentioned both methods in the article but seemed much more enthusiastic about the latter, which leaves me confused. In my experience both building and controlling were effective.

While nation-building, not only did we hand out significant amounts of humanitarian aid and technical assistance, we did so in the most politically visible ways available to us. For example, when assigned an (ineffective) clearance mission, we planned to concurrently establish a humanitarian aid drop at a local school. Once cleared we induced wary, loitering children to identify the most influential local leaders and invite them to the school. No doubt the substantial USA and IA presence operating under my Platoon's authority was compelling to the local leaders, especially when tempered by their own excited children; we saturated the area with both military and political power. Additionally, we coordinated for one of the Iraqi Army BN leaders, who was riding around in a safe and secure HMMWV, to join us. This US-facilitated political engagement between the local people and the Iraqi Army resulted in a major IO success, the voluntary surrendering of several caches, and also increased trust and future cooperation. This brings me to the second method mentioned in the second paragraph.

Realizing that the clearance aspect of the Platoon's mission was ineffective, and without our preliminary nation-building effort, we could not have pressed forward in this new area using the second method of controlling the population. By tapping US economic power, many former insurgents were simultaneously demobilized and employed. Thus found and fixed but not destroyed, i.e. controlled, the Sons of Iraq facilitated freedom of movement. Exploiting this, the Battery was able to maneuver throughout the entire area at will without sustaining a thousand cuts while en route to disrupting, capturing, or killing the hard core enemy cadres. Since both methods worked, the lesson I learned from Iraq was that there is no reason to restrict our methods, especially in ways that reduce the Soldier's natural capacity as the most effective executor of political policy. Unless challenged by the thoughtful members of this forum, I intend to use both methods when applicable upon deployment to Afghanistan sometime in the near future.