Assessing results in Iraq: too soon?

With the declared end to "major combat operations" in Iraq, it is only a matter of time before we start seeing more and more attempts by people to answer the question that Professor Kamena of the Air War College poses: "Did we win and was this effort worthwhile?"

Prof. Kamena's short piece (it's only a page) does not so much answer the posed question as it puts forth his hopes and expectations.  But this ultimately lends itself to the question: when can we begin to usefully assess the situation in Iraq?  When can we start measuring the effects of our efforts in Iraq?

My answer: not anytime soon.  While we can certainly put our finger on easy metrics (x murders this year versus y murders last year, or economic growth by z percent), these metrics have to be tied in to a purpose or endstate in order to mean anything.  Bottom line up front: the nature of Army operations in Iraq (counterinsurgency vice major combat operations or HIC) means that desired endstates more often than not are defined internally by the host nation (not us), and tangible progress (or lack thereof) may take years or decades to manifest and become apparent.

As a student in his first weeks of small group instruction at the Captain's Career Course, I have been inundated by Army doctrine.  Field Manual (FM) 3-0, simply titled Operations, is the Army's primary doctrinal publication that discusses the Army's way of fighting.  With the latest edition being released in 2008, it is the result of the Army's having looked in the mirror after nearly a decade of continuous engagement in conflict abroad.  Understanding how the Army views itself and its way of war will help us frame the conflicts we are currently engaged in; conceptualizing and visualizing this framework will in turn help us figure out if we can even begin to discuss whether our involvement in Iraq has been a success or failure.

Let's take Prof. Kamena's question and break it down into its two elements: (1) Did we win? and (2) Was this effort worthwhile?

(1) DID WE WIN?

Typically, a pre-requisite to the assignment of a label of success or failure, win or loss, is the identification of the goals or objectives.  From there, analysis should be simple: were the goals or objectives achieved?  Yes = success.  No = failure.  The obvious question then becomes: what were/are our goals in Iraq?  For the moment, let's keep ourselves out of conspiracy theories or controversy that will simply bog us down.  Still, it's a difficult question, and the best way to answer it is to work backwards and find a way to categorize our presence in Iraq: describe our actions there, and then correlate it to doctrinal purposes or endstates.  We're going to confine ourselves to the narrower perspective of military doctrine because it's faster and easier than trying to do an all-encompassing analysis or study: after all, this is a blog, not a Ph.D. dissertation or a funded think-tank.

Everything that follows will be a no-brainer for guys that have experience at the operational levels of war and higher.  For the tactical guys like me (platoon, company), this can be a bit of an eye-opener, but more importantly, a lens that clarifies and puts into context what we accomplish at our levels.  For the non-military folks, this could end up being total gibberish, or perhaps a revealing look at how the Army thinks and operates.  To some, it may come as a surprise to know that the Army as an institution has an academic side to it that goes far beyond the popular (but flawed) "just kill more of the bad guys than they kill ours" characterization.

Figure 2-2 from FM 3-0 (above) illustrates different operational themes that characterize Army actions against the spectrum of conflict.  FM 3-0 defines the spectrum of conflict as "the backdrop for Army operations....an ascending scale of violence ranging from stable peace to general war."  Keep in mind that violence can jump around the spectrum of conflict: it is not a linear scale.   As FM 3-0 reminds us, "unstable peace may erupt into general war, or general war may end abruptly in unstable peace."  The spectrum allows us to describe the security environment.  

While the spectrum of conflict describes the environment, operational themes describe Army actions.  FM 3-0 defines operational themes as describing "the character of the dominant major operation being conducted....[it] helps convey the nature of the major operation to the force to facilitate common understanding of how the commander broadly intends to operate."

Operational themes may be further broken down into the joint military operations that are conducted in support of the over-arching operational theme.  "Grouping military operations with common characteristics under operational themes allows doctrine to be developed for each theme rather than for a multitude of joint operations." (FM 3-0)

Below you will find FM 3-0's Table 2-1 (Examples of joint military operations conducted within operational themes) overlaid onto Figure 2-2.  For example, within the framework of an Irregular Warfare operational theme, conceivable joint operations include FID (foreign internal defense), COIN (counterinsurgency), CT (counterterrorism) and UW (unconventional warfare).  It is important to remember that the array of joint operations available for each operational theme are not mutually exclusive: "[f]or example, noncombatant evacuation operations may be conducted during [irregular warfare], or support to an insurgency may occur during major combat operations."

Each type of joint military operation, whether it's counterdrug, foreign humanitarian assistance, peacekeeping, counterinsurgency or an all-out conventional fight like the 2003 initial invasion named Operation IRAQI FREEDOM I (OIF I), has its own doctrinal set of purposes and objectives.

Now that we've identified ways to describe the overall environment/levels of violence (spectrum of conflict), the general categories of military operations (operational themes), and the types of actions that comprise those themes (joint military operations), we can now try to determine the current state of affairs in Iraq: both the environment on the spectrum of conflict, and the type of operations we are engaged in.  This will aid us in determining what our doctrinal operational objectives are, and maybe in turn help us figure out if our efforts have been effective.

Few will dispute that during the initial invasion of Iraq in 2003, we were engaged in major combat operations (MCO) in a state of General War.  Granted, the campaign was short, but the conventional nature of the fight and the organization of Coalition Forces (CF) and their assigned mission objectives support the characterization of OIF I as MCO/General War.

Post-invasion was when we saw a shift in the security environment in Iraq.  Although everyone was hoping that the conclusion of invasion operations would somehow spur a jump from a state of General War to Stable Peace, what we saw instead was a slow slide into Insurgency.  Religious sectarian violence exploded in Iraq.  In Baghdad,  entire neighborhoods of Sunnis or Shi'as were ravaged and vice versa.  Sunni-dominated al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) was engaged in an all-out fight with Shi'a-dominated Jaysh al-Mahdi (JAM), Moqtada al-Sadr's Shi'a militia -- while everyone else, to include CF, were caught in the middle.  

The response to this incredible spike in violence was "The Surge": the insertion of five additional brigades into Baghdad to help quell violence and re-establish security in the capital.  All of this fell within the 2004-2008 time-frame, and although there were large operations conducted (like the battles of Fallujah), by this point Iraq had slid into a state of insurgency on the spectrum of conflict.  Likewise, we shifted operational themes from MCO to irregular warfare, and counterinsurgency (COIN) became the predominant joint operation.

With the end of the Surge in 2008, execution of the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) in 2009 and the transfers of authority and sovereignty to the host nation in 2010, we are trying to push or slide things to the left.  "Advise and assist" has become the catchphrase in the media, but we need to examine things in the framework that we have already established.

Arguably, Iraq is probably in a state somewhere between insurgency and unstable peace.  Violence dropped dramatically in 2009, but we are now seeing spikes again as U.S. forces begin to reduce their footprint in Iraq.  Our operational theme probably remains irregular warfare: however the dominating joint operation will probably shift from COIN to foreign internal defense (FID).  As time moves on, I think one goal is to see our residual force of advisors shift to an operational theme of peace operations -- but whether that transition can be made anytime soon is up in the air.

But let's back up for a moment.  We spent several years engaged in COIN operations.  FM 3-0 defines counterinsurgency as those "actions taken by a government to defeat insurgency."  Here, the "government" is the host nation (HN), specifically the government of Iraq (GOI).  FM 3-0 goes on to say that "in COIN, HN forces and their partners [the U.S. and CF] operate to defeat armed resistance, reduce passive opposition, and establish or reestablish the HN government's legitimacy."  Finally, we have stumbled across the reason why it is so difficult (and perhaps too soon) to usefully assess the results of our efforts in Iraq.

The defeat of armed resistance may be quantifiable in terms of number of enemy killed or metrics illustrating lesser and lesser levels of violence.  And on a macro scale, perhaps that goal has been achieved: violence in Iraq today is nowhere near the levels seen in 2006 or 2007, the height of the insurgency.  However, as aforementioned, we are in a transition phase now, and with our withdrawal of forces may come a spike in violence, or in the worst case scenario, a return to civil war.

It is similarly difficult to say whether the goal of establishing the HN government's legitimacy has been achieved.  The elections process in Iraq has been an ongoing nightmare.  Additionally, corruption is rampant at all levels of politics: from the municipal all the way up to national.  Perhaps more striking is the populace's awareness of the corruption, which causes the varying levels of distrust in their government and security forces.  The never-ending struggle to repair the infrastructure and bring some kind of consistency to the delivery of essential services to the populace is another hit against government legitimacy.  

Finally, the most tangible, and perhaps simplest indicator, is violence.  Although we no longer see entire Sunni or Shi'a neighborhoods getting wiped out or cleansed, we are still seeing markets being blown up and acts of violence committed by terrorists and insurgents that will cause the populace to doubt the GOI's ability to provide security for them.

So it is now easy to see why it is so difficult to begin discussing whether we "won" in Iraq.  Keep this in mind the next time you see a talking head on the TV drawing bold conclusions.  We still have a lot of soldiers in Iraq, and we will continue to have soldiers there for a long time.  It may very well be ten or 20 years before we can definitively say, "Yes, we made Iraq a better place," or "No, it was a waste of time that made the global security environment worse: the country tore itself apart five years after we left, and now we have the Middle East version of Somalia."


The importance of using the correct words to say what you mean and mean what you say.  The reason I have led you on this meandering journey to simply find a way to correctly label or characterize the nature of the conflict is because of the confusion that exists in the media, in the government and even within the military.  In all three arenas, terms are thrown around and used too often without regard to their doctrinal meanings or definitions.  The ensuing confusion not only has a disruptive effect on the military's ability to see itself, but also on the public's ability to see what's going on and formulate an informed opinion.

I will be honest and admit that until I came to the Career Course and actually sat down with Army doctrine, I was also guilty of the carelessly-throw-words-around crime.  I was guilty because I was ignorant of Army doctrine: I figured I was a smart guy that knew a lot of fancy terms, but my ignorance only contributed to the problem of this institutional fog concerning our role in the contemporary operating environment.

I used to use the terms counterinsurgency and stability operations interchangeably because I didn't know any better.  Now, I understand that COIN is a type of joint operation, and stability ops is an element of full spectrum ops (along with offensive and defensive operations).  Each type of joint operation, including COIN, is a combination of all three elements in varying ratios.  A raid or a major combat operation might be heavier on offensive elements, while humanitarian assistance or COIN might be heavier on stability elements.

(2) WAS THIS WORTHWHILE?

I hate to disappoint, but there is no military metric for this.  All military action is a means to political ends.  Public opinion and society (and ultimately history) will determine whether our efforts in Iraq were worthwhile.