[LS]

One of the things I'm seeing is the difference in "corporate culture" not only among the service branches but among the different units within each branch. For ex., I have a cousin who is a Lt. Col. in the Marines and whose son was over there, and, of course, he is convinced that the "Army way" (particularly the 3rd ID was "heavy handed" like a "blung instrument" and that the Marines were sooooooo much more efficient.

This is one of the perils with our greatest military strength, which is the autonomy and individuality of our officers---each unit is (to a degree) free to establish its own policies. For ex., one of the individual decisions (I forget where, now, it's a blur) was to pull back from many operating posts in the city into a few "enclaves." This was not just for security, but (in the opinion of the Army guy who sent this to me) to make the Iraqis take more of a role in their own security---just as your group apparently did.

The disadvantages of all this is that you get policy changes that the Iraqis don't "get" when one group replaces another, and you get an uneven level of results, as, obviously, everyone won't be as successful as everyone else.

[Voice in your head]

Being a guy down at the company level, I'm not privy to the communication that the bigshots had going on. It was my impression that there was very little. The unit that replaced us seemed to have determined its strategy well in advance of ever meeting us. It seemed that we were good for nothing more than orienting them to the sector's physical landmarks and explaining logistical hurdles. The NCOs were interested in getting as many pointers as possible, so as to stay alive, but going to battalion command and staff meetings with the incoming units seemed like a waste of time, because it was as if we weren't even there.

I think you have a good point about the autonomy of the officers being a strength and a weakness. It is my impression that the leaders who came of age in the cold war were still geared towards fighting the Soviet Union and hoping for their war to be one of giant flanking maneuvers in large open terrain. I don't think they anticipated or were particularly interested in counterinsurgency. Unfortunately, that is exactly what they got. When you're fighting a big, evil, conventional opponent, you can get away with leadership via email, because the small unit leaders know their job. In other words, the autonomy of the subordinate officers had very few downsides. But, when you're conducting operations that your subordinate officers know little if nothing about (such as counterinsurgency) then you've got to be hands on, interacting with the civilians, observing the troops, and staying knee-deep in all operations, because the smaller unit leaders need guidance. Every company commander was pulling his hair out as he took his best guess as to how to run his sector, knowing nothing about the task that he had been given, resulting in totally different standards of behavior for the civilian populace as they traveled from neighborhood to neighborhood. Among the civilians, this caused confusion, frustration and a loss of confidence in the abilities of the coalition.

Empowering leaders is a great thing, but only if they have been properly trained. This mission, early on, was one for the Special Forces, Civil Affairs and Psyops - and there was a large number of those folks here. But, they were used almost exclusively for capturing high value targets. I think that it should have been the other way around. The SF folks know how to build a rapport with indigenous people, work with them and advise them. The regular infantry folks know how to kick a door in and grab or kill whomever is behind it. Unfortunately, our missions were flip-flopped.