'Soft Touch' Approach Pays Big Dividends (In Iraq)

Multi-National Force - Iraq ^ | Staff Sgt. Tony Lindback

[SandRat]

OWESAT — The early morning calm over Owesat was rocked recently by the beating rotors of helicopters carrying Rakkasan Soldiers in for an air assault.

The assault was in support of Operation Marne Courageous, a multi-faceted operation that extended the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) area of operation into an area previously under Multi-National Division – West control.

Capt. Terry Hilderbrand Jr., commander of Company A, 3rd Battalion, 187th Infantry Regiment, 3rd BCT, 101st Abn. Div. (AASLT) said there was a lot done to prepare for the strategic move.

“We’ve had numerous meetings with the sheiks in Owesat,” Hilderbrand said. Out of the four tribes in Owesat, Hilderbrand explained, three of the tribes’ sheiks had gone to Coalition forces, asking them to establish a presence in Owesat.

“They have seen Qarghuli on the eastern side of the river. They have seen the (concerned citizens groups). They know about the awakening movement in Iraq. They’re ready to give up the al-Qaida that’s located in Owesat and work with the Coalition. So, we’ve done a lot of talking with them – gaining an understanding of who the players are,” Hilderbrand said.

Using the intelligence they had about the area enabled A Co. to use more brain and less brawn moving into the area.

Soldiers respected the culture of the people they encountered by only talking to the man of the house when knocking on doors. They waited until the man of the house answered the door, rather than kicking in doors. They also allowed the man to move women and children as necessary to both accommodate local customs and allow a thorough search.

Sheiks of the village came to an agreement with Co. A to rent the property in the area to build two new patrol bases. Assets were brought from Patrol Base Dragon on the east bank of the river by ferry. Engineers used floating bridge bays and boats to move route clearance and heavy equipment vehicles to aid the development of a Patrol Base (PB) Owesat, PB Kemple and a bridge connecting Owesat to PB Dragon.

The area of operation expansion, and the location of the new patrol bases, will help Task Force Marne flush insurgents from the area, and broaden the search for Pvt. Byron Fouty and Spc. Alex Jiminez from the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division (Light Infantry), who went missing May 12.

No shots were fired during the mission. Maj. Wayne Lacey, a staff officer with the 3rd BCT, 101st Airborne Div. (AASLT), said it was a testament to planning the operation around good intelligence.

“It went well. I’m not surprised - my guys always do good,” Hilderbrand said.

[SandRat]

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[AndyJackson]

I hope folks realize how many Neocons had to be sacrificed in order to bring Petraeus in and establish an effective strategy, and how many honorable Army and Marine Corps General and senior officers sacrificed their careers trying to get this sort of thing to happen in the face of ideology.

It sounds like Iraq is starting to come right, but the lesson is that right wing ideologues are not a lot better than left wing ideologues. Truth and doing the right thing is not much of an ideology, but it always seems to be the best strategy in the end.

[gpapa]

I would like to thank you Sandrat very much for your posts on positive news from the war front. Keep up the good work.

Eagle Up!!

[SandRat]

Thank you but the praise belongs to the Troop’s.

I just try in a small way to get their story out for as many to see as possible.

Just fulfilling the core values that made this country great of Duty, Honor, Country.

[vbmoneyspender]

Here is what General Petraeus had to say about the handoff strategy before the Samarra Mosque bombing. Do you think he is lying when he says things were moving along reasonably well until the bombing occurred in February of 2006?

[Petraeus]then reflected on the past strategy. “For a variety of reasons, some pretty good reasons, we were gradually consolidating in larger bases and handing off to the Iraqis. The transition to Iraqi Security Forces, Iraqi control and local control was emphasized heavily. That was sort of moving along reasonably well until it was really undone by the bombing of th[e Golden Mosque] and the resulting sectarian violence.

[Loyal Buckeye]

The Samarra Mosque bombing set us back about 18 months.

Hats off to our military for having the perseverance and creativity for pulling this whole thing off.

[vbmoneyspender]

I actually think the Golden Mosque bombing was a good thing and that Al Qaeda catastrophically misjudged its effect. They thought it would force the Shiites to go to war against the Sunni-Arabs in Iraq and that in turn would force the Sunni states around Iraq to come in on the side of the Iraqi Sunnis.

They were right about the former and wrong about the latter. As a result, after the Samarra bombing, the Shiites had a free hand to go after the Sunnis in Baghdad and elsewhere. The sectarian cleansing that followed was ugly and brutal but it convinced the Sunnis like nothing else that if they continued with the insurgency they were going to face the same sort of genocide which they had previously inflicted on the Kurds and Shiites when they were in charge. That combined with our troops taking the gloves off in places like Ramadi finally convinced the Sunni-Arab tribes in Western Iraq that the insurgency was a loser.

As such, the Golden Mosque bombing has probably shortened the length of the Sunni insurgency by about 5 years.

[mjaneangels@aolcom]

“I hope folks realize how many Neocons had to be sacrificed in order to bring Petraeus in and establish an effective strategy, and how many honorable Army and Marine Corps General and senior officers sacrificed their careers trying to get this sort of thing to happen in the face of ideology.
It sounds like Iraq is starting to come right, but the lesson is that right wing ideologues are not a lot better than left wing ideologues. Truth and doing the right thing is not much of an ideology, but it always seems to be the best strategy in the end.”

The only problem I see with your idea above is that the current strategy would not work if there were not Iraqis trained for police and army duty. That is what was happening before the surge. I don’t think everything in the old strategy was good, but the training was a must or the current strategy would have had no chance of success.

Some things take time.