Billy Bob's Bulletins

As anyone who reads this can tell, I have pretty much quit doing this series of posts. It was started in response to Billy Bob's observation in an e-mail that news about Iraq was hard to come by in Iraq. So, I thought posting links that he could read (and if the spirit moved him comment on) more or less anonymously might serve a useful function. However, the longer I did this, the more uncomfortable I became. The news from all over the Middle East is just so consistently awful that I began to wonder if making it more accessible to someone fighting there was really the right thing to do.

However, the Washington Post today published the first two of what I gather will be a series of articles adapted from a new book by its lead reporter on military affairs, Thomas E. Ricks. The articles and the book (entitled "Fiasco: The American Military Adventure In Iraq") are pretty critical of American strategy and of the tactics that flowed from that strategy. As such, my initial reaction was that this was still another example of the kind of stuff I shouldn't burden Billy Bob with. But two things led me to go ahead. First, the intro to the series comes with links to a whole series of articles Ricks has written over the last 4 years on the debates within the military and between the military and the Administration that reads like a history of the Iraq war. It is just fascinating to see how close we came to getting it right. Second, the criticisms are not just carping. Nor are they just the ruminations of some jounalist. The criticisms come from within the military establishment itself and they contain some insights that seem to me to be still worth learning. As such, I thought Billy Bob might find some of these insights useful in terms of his own mission.

Hope I am not wrong on all of this.

Anyway, here is a link to Ricks' prior articles and here are links to the two new articles that appeared today:

In Iraq, Military Forgot Lessons of Vietnam (an overall critique of the strategy), and

'It Looked Weird and Felt Wrong' (a more particularized critique of the 4th Infantry Division's implementation of that strategy).

Two quotes from the first of the new articles stick with me:

"When you're facing a counterinsurgency war, if you get the strategy right, . . . eventually you'll get the tactics right [as well]," said retired Army Col. Robert Killebrew, a veteran of Special Forces in the Vietnam War. "If you get the strategy wrong . . ., you can refine the tactics forever, but you still lose the war."

As civil affairs officers found to their dismay, Army leaders tended to see the Iraqi people as the playing field on which a contest was played against insurgents. In [fact], the people are the prize.