www.nytimes.com/2006/10/05/washington/05doctrine.html
More Politics News The doctrine warns against some of the practices used early in the war, when the military operated without an effective counterinsurgency playbook. It cautions against overly aggressive raids and mistreatment of detainees. Instead it emphasizes the importance of safeguarding civilians and restoring essential services, and the rapid development of local security forces. The current military leadership in Iraq has already embraced many of the ideas in the doctrine. But some military experts question whether the Army and the Marines have sufficient troops to carry out the doctrine effectively while also preparing for other threats. The subtleties of the battle were highlighted Wednesday when the Iraqi Interior Ministry suspended a police brigade on suspicion that some members had been involved in death squads. The move was the most serious step Iraqi officials had taken to tackle the festering problem of militias operating within ministry forces. The new doctrine is part of a broader effort to change the culture of a military that has long promoted the virtues of using firepower and battlefield maneuvers in swift, decisive operations against a conventional enemy. The Army will use this manual to change its entire culture as it transitions to irregular warfare, said Jack Keane, a retired four-star general who served in 2003 as the acting chief of staff of the Army. But the Army does not have nearly enough resources, particularly in terms of people, to meet its global responsibilities while making such a significant commitment to irregular warfare. The doctrine is outlined in a new field manual on counterinsurgency that is to be published next month. But recent drafts of the unclassified documents have been made available to The New York Times, and military officials said that the major elements of final version would not change. The spirit of the document is captured in nine paradoxes that reflect the nimbleness required to win the support of the people and isolate insurgents from their potential base of support a task so complex that military officers refer to it as the graduate level of war. Instead of massing firepower to destroy Republican Guard troops and other enemy forces, as was required in the opening weeks of the invasion of Iraq, the draft manual emphasizes the importance of minimizing civilian casualties. The more force used, the less effective it is, it notes. Stressing the need to build up local institutions and encourage economic development, the manual cautions against putting too much weight on purely military solutions. Noting the need to interact with the people to gather intelligence and understand the civilians needs, the doctrine cautions against hunkering down at large bases. The more you protect your force, the less secure you are, it asserts. The military generally turned its back on counterinsurgency operations after the Vietnam War. The Army concentrated on defending Europe against a Soviet attack. The Marines were focused on expeditionary operations in the third world. Basically, after Vietnam, the general attitude of the American military was that we dont want to fight that kind of war again, said Conrad C Crane, the director of the military history institute at the Army War College, a retired Army lieutenant colonel and one of the principal drafters of the new doctrine. The Armys idea was to fight the big war against the Russians and ignore these other things. A common assumption was that if the military trained for major combat operations, it would be able to easily handle less violent operations like peacekeeping and counterinsurgency. The failure by civilian policy makers to prepare for the reconstruction of Iraq compounded the problem.
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