T.E. Lawrence: The Seven Pillars of Wisdom
A senior British officer has criticised the US army for its conduct in Iraq, accusing it of institutional racism, moral righteousness, misplaced optimism, and of being ill-suited to engage in counter-insurgency operations. The blistering critique, by Brigadier Nigel Aylwin-Foster, who was the second most senior officer responsible for training Iraqi security forces, reflects criticism and frustration voiced by British commanders of American military tactics. What is startling is the severity of his comments - and the decision by Military Review [pdf 1.2MB], a US army magazine, to publish them. ... Brig Aylwin-Foster's criticisms have been echoed by other senior British officers, though not in such a devastating way. General Sir Mike Jackson, the head of the army, told MPs in April 2004 as US forces attacked Falluja: "We must be able to fight with the Americans. That does not mean we must be able to fight as the Americans."
[...]
Colonel Kevin Benson, director of the US army's school of advanced military studies, who told the Washington Post the brigadier was an "insufferable British snob", said his remark had been made in the heat of the moment. "I applaud the brigadier for starting the debate," he said. "It is a debate that must go on and I myself am writing a response."
Guardian | US army in Iraq institutionally racist, claims British officer
I wonder what my friend Tom Barnett, the author of The Pentagon's New Map once heavily involved in Force Transformation and now itching to blog from Teheran, would say to the above.
On the eve of the war in Iraq, Barnett predicted that taking Baghdad would not be about settling old scores, or enforcing disarmament of illegal weapons. Rather, he wrote, it “will mark a historic tipping point—the moment when Washington takes real ownership of strategic security in the age of globalization.”
Jim Lobe | Pentagon Moving Swiftly to Become “Globocop”
Ostensibly an open-ended critique of the U.S. Army's inability to respond appropriately or effectively to the counterinsurgency (COIN) following Phase 4 of Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF), British Army Brigadier Nigel Aylwin-Foster's paper, Changing the Army for Counterinsurgency Operations, is the most scathing, but potentially constructive, document to come out of the illegal invasion and attempted occupation of Iraq. Suitably understated and ambiguous—and laced with wry, cutting compliments, it shreds all hope any U.S. ally might have of the American army filling the stated mandate given it by its Pentagon-controlled political masters.
Offering compelling reason to change both the American worldview and way of life, the British officer points out that military culture is born of social norms and values and, to be successful, military objectives should always subordinate themselves to political ends. Showing 'force transformation' to date to be the fundamentally flawed results of systemically self-serving institutions of delusion, Brigadier Foster hints at just how difficult it will be to turn the average American recruit into an effective soldier—if, indeed, it can be done. Using the demented Soldier's Creed to good effect, he points out that being a soldier takes a damned side more than a blind commitment to becoming a high-tech, unthinking warrior hell-bent on obliterating one's painted enemies (and all unfortunates in their vicinity). Brigadier Foster finds the military—and, by extension, the society it represents, sorely wanting; rendered ineffective by:
"...a combination of enduring, longer term factors, compounded by shorter term, transient factors which have collectively conspired to render the U.S. Army conceptually and culturally ill-disposed to OIF Phase 4, and similarly ill-disposed to adapt to the extent required, and thus ironically ill-suited to the path determined for it de facto by U.S. Foreign Policy at the beginning of the 21st Century."In other words: "Listen chaps, if you're to stop making such asses of yourselves, you'll have to try again. From scratch."
If I were to fault Foster, I'd accuse him of presupposing intelligent life in the White House and Pentagon. He fails to consider a mindset believing these to be the End Times, an apocalyptic era calling for global resource grabs and the obliteration of naysayers. While, for the sake of all of us, the Brits and other nation states tend to play by the rules—no matter how ugly they may be, the U.S. administration, riding the compliance of its populace, realises it can make them up as it goes along; or do away with them altogether. It seems that, in the American psyche, life is a movie. It ends with a bang, not a whimper.
Observers will note that Barnett’s arc of instability corresponds well to regions of great oil, gas, and mineral wealth, a reminder again of Wolfowitz’s 1992 draft study. It asserted that the key objective of U.S. strategy should be “to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power.”
Jim Lobe | Pentagon Moving Swiftly to Become "Globocop"
The Arabic-speaking areas of Asia in this sense were a rough parallelogram. The northern side ran from Alexandretta, on the Mediterranean, across Mesopotamia eastward to the Tigris. The south side was the edge of the Indian Ocean, from Aden to Muscat. On the west it was bounded by the Mediterranean, the Suez Canal, and the Red Sea to Aden. On the east by the Tigris, and the Persian Gulf to Muscat. This square of land, as large as India, formed the homeland of our Semites, in which no foreign race had kept a permanent footing, though Egyptians, Hittites, Philistines, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Turks and Franks had variously tried. All had in the end been broken, and their scattered elements drowned in the strong characteristics of the Semitic race.
[...]
We pay for these things too much in honour and in innocent lives. I went up the Tigris with one hundred Devon Territorials, young, clean, delightful fellows, full of the power of happiness and of making women and children glad. By them one saw vividly how great it was to be their kin, and English. And we were casting them by thousands into the fire to the worst of deaths, not to win the war but that the corn and rice and oil of Mesopotamia might be ours.
[...]
For my work on the Arab front I had determined to accept nothing. The Cabinet raised the Arabs to fight for us by definite promises of self-government afterwards. Arabs believe in persons, not in institutions. They saw in me a free agent of the British Government, and demanded from me an endorsement of its written promises. So I had to join the conspiracy, and, for what my word was worth, assured the men of their reward. In our two years' partnership under fire they grew accustomed to believing me and to think my Government, like myself, sincere. In this hope they performed some fine things, but, of course, instead of being proud of what we did together, I was bitterly ashamed.
It was evident from the beginning that if we won the war these promises would be dead paper, and had I been an honest adviser of the Arabs I would have advised them to go home and not risk their lives fighting for such stuff: but I salved myself with the hope that, by leading these Arabs madly in the final victory I would establish them, with arms in their hands, in a position so assured (if not dominant) that expediency would counsel to the Great Powers a fair settlement of their claims. ... I risked the fraud, on my conviction that Arab help was necessary to our cheap and speedy victory in the East, and that better we win and break our word than lose.
[...]
The only thing remaining was to refuse rewards for being a successful trickster and, to prevent this unpleasantness arising, I began in my reports to conceal the true stories of things, and to persuade the few Arabs who knew to an equal reticence. In this book also, for the, last time, I mean to be my own judge of what to say.
T.E. Lawrence | The Seven Pillars of Wisdom
