The damage assessments out of Iraq and Afghanistan are devastating. So is a military officer's recent analysis of the way the Administration's handled one of the most critical strategic elements of the so-called "War on Terror": the battle to persuade the Iraqi and Afghan people that their future lies in building an enlightened, non-fundamentalist society.
Not only is the new Iraqi government anti-Israeli and pro-Iranian, but the US-backed Afghan government has reinstated the infamous "Ministry for the Prevention of Vice and the Promotion of Virtue," the agency that intimidated women under the Taliban. Fundamentalism is back in black.
These developments underscore the failure of the US to promote the democratic and sectarian values we were supposedly fighting to instill there. Poor decisions by the civilian leadership in Washington have put our military into wars it can't win - either on the battlefield, or in local hearts and minds.
It took a unique combination of naïve thinking and managerial incompetence, backed by the nearly unanimous support of the Republican Party (and some Democrats), to get us where we are today. They elected to engage in two wars without proper planning, and failed to make executive decisions along the way that might have minimized the damage caused by their mis-steps.
Major Joseph Cox of the United States Army documents the stunning failure of the Pentagon's leadership to design and execute an effective strategy for communicating with civilian populations in Iraq and Afghanistan. We failed to give our military the tools it needed to send its message to the people of the countries we've occupied. How could we ask them to create a climate where democracy might take hold?
Admittedly, it was an impossible mission from the start. But our Republican-neocon leadership believes otherwise, and initiated these wars based on that belief. Yet, with Katrina-like ineptitude, they failed to prepare and mobilize for the very goals they sought to achieve: the social and political transformation of the Middle East through the creation of "model democracies."
They even failed in the more basic goal of using communication tools to help increase the odds of battlefield success, as Major Cox documents in his monograph (warning: pdf). The paper is entitled "Information Operations in Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom - What Went Wrong?"
Major Cox studied the effectiveness of military "information operations" (IO) in these wars. That's the field of defensive and offensive communications, which the military uses to a) neutralize hostile propaganda and communications, b) address neutral inhabitants of the country (i.e. to discourage them from joining an insurgency), and c) building public support for the broader US mission (such as spreading Western-style democracy).
Altough IO is more critical for the US military in the 21st Century than it has even been, Major Cox observes that:
-"A recent Rand Study on intelligence support to IO (in Iraq) determined that intelligence failed in providing the commanders with the level of support they required ..."
-"Even though the TOEs (tables of organization and equipment) provided the IO section with basic equipment to be moderately functional, there were still key pieces of equipment missing. (emphasis mine.)"
In other words, soldiers attempting to perform this key function lacked the hardware they needed (especially computers), and commanders lacked key intelligence they needed to do an effective job in this area. This is especially important to remember as the Republicans move closer to blaming the commanders on the ground for the problems the military has encountered under their supervision.
Cox adds:
" ... commanders needed more cultural awareness training ... training usually consisted of general cultural guidelines, usually along the lines of cultural do's and don'ts ... Commanders needed more detailed knowledge (of) the aspect of religion, family structures, political structures, tribal issues, demographics, cultural norms and mores and culturally based personal information processing methods to understand what effect his operations would have in a given area."
Signs of this breakdown in training are everywhere in Iraq and Afghanistan - in a burgeoning insurgency, and in polling figures showing widespread hostility toward occupation forces. Granted, these sentiments may have been unavoidable, especially given the figures in the table shown above (from the Times of London), but it's possible that they could have been reduced.
Incidents like the burning of an insurgent's body by soldiers in a psyops action, in violation of Islamic tradition, might have been avoided with better cultural training. And many experts believe that the release of a video showing al-Zarqawi's unfamiliarity with an American rifle, which was intended to belittle him, may have had the opposite effect. (After all, the rifle must have been captured from an American soldier.)
Among the monograph's litany of described failures, this one stands out:
"One person the CPA (coalition authority - i.e., Bremer) could never meet with was the Ayatollah Sistani. Prior to the war, Sistani was a senior Iraqi Shi'a cleric but no one understood his importance. By the time the CPA realized he was the most respected Iraqi Shi'a cleric, it was too late to influence him positively."
Despite planning the Iraq war openly for over a year - and covertly for far longer - the Administration had failed to identify one of the most critical influence leaders in the country.
The paper also describes extensive resource problems. One was the lack of available translators, which hampered IO's ability to deliver the military's message. Another was the decision to move the command post for these operations out of Iraq and back to the U.S., making it difficult to respond quickly to changing needs. The Commando Solo, an airplane used for public broadcasting, was a critical communication tool that was only available for a few hours each day, and at one point was moved out of the Iraqi theater of operations altogether.
Major Cox also details these serious omissions:
"The JPOTF (Joint PsyOps Task Force) produced no products to prevent or limit looting or provide the civilians with instructions for dealing with coalition military forces, except avoid the roads at night and avoid Iraqi military equipment. There were not even products available to announce USCENTCOM's rewards program for information leading to WMD stockpiles, or (for) former regime members."
Cox cites the hiring of an inexperienced public relations firm, the Lincoln Group, with surprise. The Lincoln Group's practice of writing stories and planting them covertly in the Iraqi media backfired, creating widespread suspicion of the local press. As Cox writes: "... they violated on of the key principles of PSYOP ... which was to make it clear to the target audience that the articles were from Coalition Forces." He adds, "The deception failed in that the articles were so poorly written that it was clear to most Iraqis the articles were from the Coalition."
To be clear, Major Cox makes no political statements. Yet the management actions described in his monograph add up to yet another indictment of this Administration's record of military mismanagement. Despite Sen. Clinton's new-found animosity toward Donald Rumsfeld, these problems reflect decisions made or supported by the entire GOP leadership.
Targeting Rumsfeld only allows the Republicans to displace blame on one (admittedly incompetent) individual, rather than taking responsibility for the policy failures they initiated as a group.
Remind me again: Why are the Republicans considered "strong on national security"?
(thanks to Steven Aftergood's "Secrecy News" for the link to Major Cox's paper)