Voices from the Front: An Iraqi Army Officer’s Account of the Battle Against the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS)

Excellent Foreign Intrigue article: http://foreign-intrigue.com/2014/09/voices-from-the-front-2/

I fear we have lost the initiative in countering the ISIS threat. The US seems focused solely on destroying ISIS equipment and senior leadership, instead of being be concerned with mid-level leadership.

ISIS leadership anticipated US-led airstrikes. They moved fighters and equipment out of strongholds more than a month ago.  They now blend in with the various population hubs which support them, daring the United States to escalate the situation by attacking these hubs.



The US airstrikes currently underway, I'm afraid, have more to do with countering the bad mid-term election optics which currently serve to highlight Obama's impotence in the face of the beheading videos. This administration has always, and continues to be, obsessed with their image in the media. To be sure, all administrations are guilty of this, but the Obama team takes media paranoia to a new level.

General Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently said that 15,000 troops are needed to destroy ISIS. If either Obama or Congress ultimately heeds this recommendation, and US ground combat operations recommence in Iraq or begin for the first time in Syria, I strongly believe that operations must be quick. The whole thing needs to be over in 3-4 months. During that time, every asset in the US military arsenal should be used for full victory. We cannot settle for anything less, and in order to win there has to be a willingness to get dirty with the people spreading the dirt.

Otherwise we, as a Country, are the equivalent of a soccer team 'trying' to win while taking great pains to ensure that our uniforms receive no grass stains. That is a laughable scenario, but you can get your bottom dollar that if we only engage halfway, the other team - ISIS - would do just that: they will laugh at us.

We must also be willing to take extreme risks if they become necessary. For example, surprise drop the entire 173rd Airborne to cut-off escape routes after the Peshmerga, under the advisement of US Special Forces, attack a major ISIS stronghold - something like that. Right now, ISIS believes the United States is risk averse, and they are correct. As a result, they can formulate tactics based on knowing what we won't do.

In 2004 I was a member of a four-man counter-ambush patrol in Iraq. We were trying to sneaky-pete our way on foot to catch guys setting up IEDs. Quiet-like. The four of us volunteered - one man from each of three squads and our Platoon Sergeant. I'll save the long story, but the short of it is that we got in trouble with our Battalion HQ. They didn't like the low number of guys. Well, guess what, we were armed to the gills! We had a QRF standing by - one that we coordinated ourselves. We had justifiable reasons why we did what we did, but we overruled. Bottom line, the sort of risk averse mentality displayed by our HQ negatively affects combat operations and needs to stop.

Risk averse behavior has been the style of United States General Officers since the Clinton administration.  We have weapons in our arsenal that we are afraid to use, often because they are deemed as too expensive to risk. Why, then, spend billions on these expensive shiny things? We pay billions in jump pay to servicemen but never really use this 'risky' capability. Shit, our entire society is risk averse, except for squirrel suit skydivers.  In engaging in combat operations, we need to act like American Wild Weasel Pilots over Vietnam in 1966.

In 2005 my Marine infantry platoon was living at a combat outpost under a bridge in Iraq, 10 miles away from the Battalion HQ. At combat outposts you only bring what you need; any non-essential gear is locked away in sea bags placed in storage back at HQ. When it came time to go home, the HQ started issuing out directives for every Marine to take inventory of his issued gear and fill out a form.

No problem, I thought to myself. I get it. They have to know who has what in terms of equipment so they can record combat losses. It helped that I was conditioned to do gear layouts twice a week for a portion of my predeployment cycle. It usually went something like this: "layout off of your stuff on two ponchos, fold your socks this exact way and stack them this exact way and place them two inches from the upper right corner, next to your gay-ass motherfucking reflective running belt. Then stand at parade rest for 1.5 hours waiting for the CO to come by to admire your stack of socks."

Well, in contrast, this combat equipment inventory was easy! I was a team leader and team leaders were allowed to verify our guy's equipment.

Problem was, HQ said the forms were needed immediately. I can't say for sure, but lets say it was Tuesday. Battalion getting the forms on Wednesday was not acceptable. So we were going to make a 10 mile trip in HMMVWs down one of the most dangerous roads in all of Iraq, just so that we could drop off equipment inspection forms.

What's more, in order to verify that equipment was present it had to be seen. The Marines had much of the gear to be inspected back at the base in storage, therefore it could not be accounted for. Nevertheless, after vocalizing my argument against the inspection, I was overruled.

We were about two weeks from rotating in off the line for good. Once pulled off the line, we were scheduled to be at Battalion HQ for a week before departing for Camp Victory at Baghdad International Airport. During this time at HQ we knew that almost every day we'd be doing redundant gear inspections and a great many more forms. So the fact that we were making a special trip down IED alley to just to deliver the initial, rather tentative wave of inspection forms was asinine. We risked the lives of Marines over meaningless paperwork. At least no Marines were killed as a result.

What is the point of my personal accounts surrounding military decision-making? Even the military occasionally gets detached from its true purpose: winning in combat. Some leaders get "bureaucrat-ized" - they issue orders to 'part the seas' for paperwork. Priority is given to producing powerpoint presentations. Their intentions are good; they have a steadfast belief in the chain-of-command and decide not to ask questions. But they sometimes get tunnel vision. They sometimes ask Marines to risk their lives for stupid paperwork-oriented reasons, but cringe when four heavily armed Marines try a new (more quiet) technique of inserting into an ambush position in order to increase chances of killing the enemy.

Calculated risks and adaptive tactics are not stupid. Winning every war in the history of our Country until 1945, and losing every war since then because we became risk averse and began to embrace a policy of limited war - that is definition of stupid.

I've listed two short scenarios for what I would deem as an acceptable approach to a new ground combat mission in Iraq/Syria:

Scenario One. Total annihilation must be the goal. When the Iraqi Army decides to retake Mosul or other ISIS strongholds, we should only participate if their intention is to flatten it. Marines are good at killing everything they see, and would be ideal for this mission.

Scenario Two. If the Iraqi Army decides to conduct counterinsurgency in Mosul, US Army Special Forces should advise them and work with Iraqi/Peshmerga Special Forces to coordinate the battlespace. That's it. It will be a cluster-fuck quagmire if US military conventional forces rejoin the counterinsurgency fight in Mosul or anywhere else in the Middle East. If scenario two occurs, it can be in conjunction with sporadic bouts of scenario one sprinkled in.

The op-tempo of either scenario should be very high. We should not construct any large bases because our purpose cannot be to occupy. The 75th Ranger Regiment, 3rd and 5th SFG, the 82nd/101st/173rd Airborne, SEAL Teams, three carrier battle groups, various air assets based in Europe, and a MEU of 1,100 combat Marines - all of these units can sustain high optempo for 3-4 months when working as a total force. 

No micro-management on the part of politicians or any bullshit appointed State Department Special attaché. In order to achieve an attainable military objective, all of the people in the units I listed above just need to be allowed to deal out death to the enemy.

Unless they are allowed to do this, I am 100% against countering ISIS with ground forces. Anything less than a mindset that is fully committed to bringing the most intense combat possible means that we will lose more Americans, but gain nothing in the end.