U.S. Military takes lessons from Iraq 'insurgent' war

As the fight in Iraq drives fundamental changes to the military, it is also forcing a debate on how far those changes should go.

By Gordon Lubold | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

from the March 20, 2008 edition

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Washington - Five years of war in Iraq have emphasized how US forces need to be adept at fighting so-called irregular warfare: One moment, troops are conducting full-combat operations, while the next, they're handing out candy and soccer balls.

But as the fight in Iraq – and in Afghanistan and elsewhere – drives fundamental changes to the military, it is also forcing a debate on how far those changes should go, especially as the Pentagon looks ahead to potential future conflicts.

At the center of this debate is a proposal to create a permanent force of 20,000 new "combat advisors." Such a force would position the Army to better train indigenous forces to take on counterinsurgencies for themselves. The idea behind it is that today's wars are not fought with tanks and bombers so much as with hearts and minds, and many officers believe the Army needs to train a generation of soldiers as "warrior diplomats."

In fact, the reluctance to view Iraq as an insurgency and the institutional inability, initially, to deploy forces to fight an insurgency contributed to the current situation in Iraq, many officers say.

But the question becomes: How many eggs should the military put in this counterinsurgency basket?

Officials in the Bush administration have long argued that success in Iraq and Afghanistan will come when Iraqi security forces or the Afghan national Army or police can take responsibility for their own country's security. The proposal for a permanent adviser corps comes from noted counterinsurgency experts including Lt. Col. John Nagl, who says it bolsters US efforts to train such advisers – not only for current conflicts, but for other insurgencies the United States is very likely to confront.

"The need for well-trained, professional combat advisors is unlikely to diminish in the foreseeable future," Colonel Nagl writes in an essay published by the Center for a New American Security, a think tank in Washington.

Yet building an adviser corps essentially thumbs its nose at the notion that the US will engage in fighting a conventional army like China's, which raises hackles across the military establishment. It also focuses on the forces of the Army and Marine Corps far more so than those of the Navy or Air Force, which some officers believe are still structured to fight more conventional threats.

However, even those who believe the US will continue to fight insurgencies take issue with establishing a permanent adviser corps. They argue that such efforts essentially prepare the military to fight the most recent war it fought.

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