In 1942, Russia was fully engaged in a battle for its very survival along the Eastern front.  Stalin was demanding that the Allies open a second front in the West.  Britain had tried day bombing, but it had proven too difficult to protect its pilots in the daylight, and many pilots and aircraft were lost.  Neither Britain nor the United States was anywhere near ready to conduct a land invasion of Europe, but both nations might offer such aid as an air attack might bring.

At the end of 1942, the British Chiefs of Staff called for “the progessive destruction and dislocation of the enemy’s war industrial and economic system, and the undermining of his morale to a point where his capacity for armed resistance is fatally weakened.”  No fleet of bombers could yet accurately deliver enough high explosives to raze a city.  But if the bombloads were incendiary, then massed aircraft might combine their destructiveness.

On July 24, 1943, the bombing of Hamburg began.  As noted by Richard Rhodes in The Making of the Atomic Bomb, a flight lieutenant remarks of the scene (pg 473):

The burning of Hamburg that night was remarkable in that I saw not many fires but one.  Set in the darkness was a turbulent dome of bright red fire, lighted and ignited like the glowing heart of a vast brazier.  I saw no flames, no outlines of buildings, only brighter fires which flared like yellow torches against a background of bright red ash.  Above the city was a misty red haze.  I looked down, fascinated but aghast, satisfied yet horrified.  I had never seen a fire like that before and was never to see its like again.

Roads melted, and some people were seen stuck in the melted asphalt, having put their hands out to try to get out, only to get their hands stuck as well.  Many were seen on fire, eventually melting in their own fat.  Eight square miles of Hamburg were completely burned out that night, killing 45,000 Germans.

Here Richard Rhodes is setting up the discussion at the end of the book in which the reader engages in the ethical choice to drop the atomic bomb on Japan, or commit 200,000 men to a land invasion of Japan, possibly losing many or even a majority of them.  This book is a technical, sobering and difficult read, but highly recommended.  It is meant only for the serious thinker.

The pendulum has swung to its apex in the opposite direction.  A recent Washington Times commentary gives us food for thought concerning application of rules of engagement in combat action in Afghanistan.

Now that Marcus Luttrell’s book “Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of Seal Team 10″ is a national bestseller, maybe Americans are ready to start discussing the core issue his story brings to light: the inverted morality, even insanity, of the American military’s rules of engagement (ROE).

On a stark mountaintop in Afghanistan in 2005, Leading Petty Officer Luttrell and three Navy SEAL teammates found themselves having just such a discussion. Dropped behind enemy lines to kill or capture a Taliban kingpin who commanded between 150-200 fighters, the SEAL team was unexpectedly discovered in the early stages of a mission whose success, of course, depended on secrecy. Three unarmed Afghan goatherds, one a teenager, had stumbled across the Americans’ position.

This presented the soldiers with an urgent dilemma: What should they do? If they let the Afghans go, they would probably alert the Taliban to the their whereabouts. This would mean a battle in which the Americans were outnumbered by at least 35 to 1. “Little Big Horn in turbans,” as Marcus Luttrell would describe it. If the Americans didn’t let the goatherds go — if they killed them, there being no way to hold them — the Americans would avoid detection and, most likely, leave the area safely. On a treeless mountainscape far from home, four of our bravest patriots came to the ghastly conclusion that the only way to save themselves was forbidden by the rules of engagement. Such an action would set off a media firestorm, and lead to murder charges for all.

It is agonizing to read their tense debate as Mr. Luttrell recounts it, the “lone survivor” of the disastrous mission. Each of the SEALs was aware of “the strictly correct military decision” — namely, that it would be suicide to let the goatherds live. But they were also aware that their own country, for which they were fighting, would ultimately turn on them if they made that decision. It was as if committing suicide had become the only politically correct option. For fighting men ordered behind enemy lines, such rules are not only insane. They’re immoral.

The SEALs sent the goatherds on their way. One hour later, a sizeable Taliban force attacked, beginning a horrendous battle that resulted not only in the deaths of Mr. Luttrell’s three SEAL teammates, but also the deaths of 16 would-be rescuers — eight additional SEALS and eight Army special operations soldiers whose helicopter was shot down by a Taliban rocket-propelled grenade.

“Look at me right now in my story,” Mr. Luttrell writes. “Helpless, tortured, shot, blown up, my best buddies all dead, and all because we were afraid of the liberals back home, afraid to do what was necessary to save our own lives. Afraid of American civilian lawyers. I have only one piece of advice for what it’s worth: If you don’t want to get into a war where things go wrong, where the wrong people sometimes get killed, where innocent people sometimes have to die, then stay the hell out of it in the first place.”

It might have been that firing on the goatherds would have divulged their position to the enemy.  But assuming the accuracy of the scenario given to us above, i.e., it is possible for Luttrell and his team to have killed the goatherds and avoided the combat caused by divulging their position, then a different choice should have been made in this instance.

Another complicating factor is that the Luttrells’s team could only surmise that the goatherds would give away their position.  They could not know with absolute certainty.  In the end, they were right in their suspicion, but either way, the moral of the story is that in such situations certainty is not possible and thus should not be required.

No one wants to see civilians burning in streets of melted asphalt.  Similarly, no one wants to see teams of U.S. forces hamstrung by rules that are made out to be rigid and inflexible when taught to them, but which cannot possibly be applied that way in a broken and complex world.  Latitude and professional judgment should be the order of the day.  A pendulum that isn’t swinging is the best approach.

Postscript: This article has elicited a visceral reaction.  Just to cover a few basics, (1) yes, I know what the LOAC is, (2) no, I am not advocating changing it, or even the written ROE, necessarily, (3) my position is somewhat more nuanced than that, with greater emphasis on judgment during battle, and more discrete judicial and prosecutorial temperament, and finally (4) no, allowing the killing of U.S. troops didn’t “win hearts and minds” in Afghanistan.

The world over, the word Marine defines something more than a soldier.  It arouses the image of a warrior on the boundlessness of the oceans, coming from the mystique of the sea onto the land - an amphibian, a soldier of the sea.  The aura is of one who is different and of whom more is expected … This is The Corps, the strongest brotherhood in the world (The Marines).

Michael Yon is a clearheaded reporter and diligent - even relentless - embedded blogger.  Every article he writes is worth reading, and then reading again.  But permit us a spirited response to one of his statements in The Ghosts of Anbar, Part II of IV (actually, Michael is quoting others at this point).

Arrowhead Ripper was merely the latest experience that underlines the Army’s rapidly-growing expertise. Yet the Marines have adapted faster and seem poised to win the war in their battle space. In fact, it’s been Army officers who have told me repeatedly over the past several years that nobody is successfully morphing to meet this war faster than the Marines. Of course, Army officers who compliment Marines always say, “But that didn’t come from me.�

While a nice-sounding compliment, it completely misses the point, similar to the commendations of strategy change under General Petraeus.  With all due respect, whether under the command of General Abizaid or General Petraeus, the Marines have done their own thing from the very beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

The Marines have essentially won Anbar in spite of the obstacles created by the administration.  The pullback from the first battle for Fallujah is now roundly criticized as a strategic blunder, but the Marines had no such desire to pull back, and were incredulous at such an idea.  Yet upon being offered responsibility for the province with the worst security situation on the planet, the Marines accepted without hesitation.  For approximately four years now, half of the United States Marine Corps has been deployed in the Anbar Province, taking sniper fire, enduring IEDs, and battling both al Qaeda and indigenous insurgents.

There hasn’t been so much as a hint of pullback from duties, and instead of cloistering in safe Forward Operating Bases and hunkering down behind barriers, they took the fight to the enemy from combat outposts.  The Marines had tested the strategy of combat outposts in Anbar before Petraeus ever changed the strategy for the Army.  Contrary to the British who falsely believed that a ’softer’ approach would win hearts and minds, they knew that before a terrorized population could trust them, the fight must be taken to the insurgency with heavy kinetic operations.

Americans learned a basic lesson of warfare here: that Iraqis, bludgeoned for 24 years by Saddam’s terror, are wary of rising against any force, however brutal, until it is in retreat. In Anbar, Sunni extremists were the dominant force, with near-total popular support or acquiescence, until the offensive broke their power.

This work set the foundation in place for the so-called Anbar Awakening, or the turning of the tribes against al Qaeda.  The Awakening cannot and must not be seen in the abstract without the proper framework.  The framework was built by three prior years of operations by Marines.

Upon this change in Anbar, the Marines knew that constabulary operations and reconstruction were necessary to completely win the security, and relationships with the population were of the utmost importance.  Thus, field grade officers worked hard behind the scenes for years to cultivate friendships with tribal sheiks and community leaders.

There is nothing spurious (the tribes suddenly awakened) or accidental about the victory in Anbar.  It was planned and executed with precision by the United States Marine Corps.  As for the idea of the Marines ”morphing” into an effective counterinsurgency force, those who have followed history find this to be slightly amusing.  The Marines have been fighting and winning small wars in over 300 engagements since their birthday of 10 November 1775.

From General Lejeune’s Marine Corps Birthday Message:

“On November 10, 1775, a Corps of Marines was created by a resolution of the Continental Congress. Since that date, many thousand men have borne the name Marine. In memory of them, it is fitting that we who are Marines should commemorate the Birthday of our Corps by calling to mind the glories of its long and illustrious history.

The record of our Corps is one which will bear comparison with that of the most famous military organizations in the world’s history. During 90 of the 146 years of it’s existence the Marine Corps has been in action against the nations foes. From the battle of Trenton to the Argonne. Marines have won foremost honors in war, and in the long eras of tranquility at home. Generation after generation of Marines have grown gray in war in both hemispheres and in every corner of the seven seas that our country and its citizens might enjoy peace and security.

In every battle and skirmish since the birth of our Corps Marines have acquitted themselves with the greatest distinction, winning new honors on each occasion until the term Marine has come to signify all that is highest in military efficiency and soldierly virtue.

This high name of distinction and soldierly repute we who are Marines today have received from those who preceded us in the Corps. With it we also received from them the eternal spirit which has animated our Corps from generation to generation and has been the distinguishing mark of the Marines in every age. So long as that spirit continues to flourish Marines will be found equal to every emergency in the future as they have been in the past, and the men of our nation will regard us as worthy successors to the long line of illustrious men who have served as “Soldiers of the Sea” since the founding of the Corps.”

In Operation Alljah and the Marines of 2nd Battalion, 6th Regiment, we interviewed Lt. Col. William F. Mullen who gave us a realistic but positive report on the accomplishments of the Marines in Fallujah.  As expected, we received e-mail from detractors (is Fallujah really this much better off?).  There are also reports that take the same facts and turn them into a completely different interpretation than the one we published.

We have also published extensively on the calamity in Basra, the British having essentially lost the military struggle for Basra and surrounding areas.  True to form, this assessment has also been questioned by detractors.  But even the British are finally managing to turn their gaze towards just how bad the situation is in Basra.

Like Donald Rumsfeld, the man British commentators love to hate, we never sent enough troops to Iraq. At first we were pretty condescending to the Americans, insisting that our light touch, learned in Northern Ireland, was far more effective than their alleged heavy-handedness. We were wrong. Basra is not Londonderry. Our ever-lower profile was seen by local militias — and the public — as weakness. As a result the militia grewstronger and stronger, and now Basra is a town of warring gangs. We never committed enough — and we reduced our numbers much too soon. We now have only 5,000 men and women in Basra. That small force must protect itself, must continue training the 10th Iraqi Division.

The U.S. has also begun to divulge the sensitivity of the situation.

“This is less an insurgency issue than it is criminal, a borderline Mafia kind of situation. You’ve got competing criminal interests looking for territory down there,” said Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon’s press secretary.

“So that has certainly complicated matters for the Brits down there, and it certainly remains a concern for us,” he told reporters.

Britain has 5,500 troops in Basra but almost all have been pulled back to the airport where they are training Iraqi forces.

This admission may be gratuitous. Beyond criminal activity, three strong, competing Shi’a factions are at war with one another and openly demanding protection money from the population: Jaish al Mahdi, the Fadhila Party, and SIIC (Badr).

So what is the relationship between Basra and Anbar, and is there any acendotal evidence to back up these analyses?  The best on-the-scene evidence comes from Omar Fadhil of Iraq the Model, who assesses the reversal of roles between the Shi’a south and the Sunni West in Crossing Anbar.

We’ve been getting some reports about the improvement in security in Anbar in the last few months but little was said about the highway that runs across the province.

The several hundred kilometer western section of the international highway is technically Iraq’s second “port” in a way as it connects Iraq with Syria and Jordan and was for years the only window to the world when all airports and the southern ports in Basra were closed to traffic in the 1990s.

For most of the time between 2004 and 2007 taking this road was considered suicidal behavior as the chance someone would be robbed or killed was too high.

But with the tribal awakening in Anbar that cleared large parts of the province from al-Qaeda the highway is expected to be safer, but how much safer?

My family returned yesterday from a vacation in Syria and they have used this road twice in six weeks. I had tried hard to convince them not to do that and take a flight instead but now after hearing their story I’m convinced that my fear was not justified; the road is safe…

This is good not only for Iraq’s economy and traveling but also for the American troops who can use this road as an alternative supply route in case the British troops withdraw and leave the strategic southern highway between Kuwait and Baghdad unguarded.

Back to the story; there are two travel plans for passenger SUV’s and buses from Damascus to Baghdad; one includes leaving Damascus between 10 pm and midnight, reaching the Syrian border control before dawn, entering the Iraqi border control at 8 am and arriving in Baghdad around sunset. A total of approximately 20 hours with 6 to 7 hours lost in waiting and passport control.

The second plan includes leaving Damascus at noon and here convoys carrying the passengers continue to move all the way until a short distance northwest of Ramadi. At this point the time would be between midnight and 2 am and since that’s within curfew hours in Baghdad, the drivers park their vehicles and everyone gets to sleep 3 or 4 hours and wait for the sun to rise and then the journey would continue.

Now the first plan sounds predictable, safe and well planned given the distance and necessary stops. But look at the second one carefully and try to picture the scene; dozens of passenger SUV’s (GMC trucks mostly) and buses parking in he middle of nowhere in a zone that was until recently the heart of al-Qaeda’s Islamic state! Obviously the drivers and families feel safe enough that they know they won’t be robbed and slaughtered by cold-blooded terrorists. Even more interesting, this parking and resting zone was not designated nor protected by the Iraqi or American forces but simply an arrangement the drivers managed on their own perhaps with cooperation from the local tribes.

I still laugh every time I think of this incredible change and I honestly wouldn’t have believed it if the story teller wasn’t my father.

This sign of positive progress brings to my mind a sad irony. Back in 2004 when taking the Anbar highway was out of question for me, the Sunni dentist, I made the trip back and fourth between Baghdad and Basra countless times without any fear.

Now, I’m ready to try the trip through the west, but going south through the militia infested land is something I’d never dare do at this stage.

The reports on the pacification of Anbar are indeed correct, and sadly, the British failure in Basra has made Operation Iraqi Freedom much more complicated.

Prior:

• Operation Alljah and the Marines of 2nd Battalion, 6th Regiment
• The British Flight from Basra
• The Rise of the JAM
• Calamity in Basra and British Rules of Engagement
• Al Qaeda, Indigenous Sunnis and the Insurgency in Iraq

In Instructions on How to Repair the Electrical Grid in Iraq, we made the case that the electrical grid was too delicate, complicated and far-flunge to be amenable to protection against insurgents (in this case it was the Jaish al Mahdi who was targeting the electrical grid, destroying parts of it and in other cases hijacking the power for local use).  Another example of this same tactic comes to us from a different region of Iraq; this time the example comes from the Diyala Province, and is likely perpetrated by al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.

The US military says its troops have killed 33 insurgents in a joint operation with Iraqi troops 80km (50 miles) north of Baghdad.  It said several hundred US and Iraqi soldiers took part in the operation on Monday to reopen the water supply to the town of Khalis.

Residents say al-Qaeda fighters have a strong presence in the area.

Insurgents cut water supplies to Khalis several days ago by shovelling earth into an irrigation canal.

The US military said a joint assault force of US and Iraqi troops - which landed by helicopter - killed 13 insurgents. It said fire from attack aircraft killed 20 others.

It is not possible to deploy enough troops to protect all infrastructure when making it dysfunctional simply involves shovelling dirt into an irrigation canal (most likely a weir type of structure).  There are too many kilometers of canals to protect.  This isn’t to deny that there is a complex interplay between the availability of goods, services, security and government, and the population informing on insurgent identities and locations.  Counterinsurgency remains a difficult venture.

But it is to say that when the impossible presents itself (i.e., protect all infrastructure, whether electrical grids, water supplies, or other utilities such as sewage, in order to win the population), the stipulations are unacceptable and the game must be reformulated.  Coalition forces implemented the correct tactic to restore basic services.

They targeted those who targeted the infrastructure.

In Al Qaeda, Indigenous Sunnis and the Insurgency in Iraq, we discussed how most of the insurgency in Kirkuk was comprised of left-over Ba’athists, and the cooperation with the 1920 Revolution Brigade in Anbar had spread to Baghdad.  Yet in Fallujah proper, as we discussed in Operation Alljah and the Marines of 2nd Battalion, 6th Regiment, this approach was not only not necessary in Fallujah proper, but would not have worked.

As for the awakening, that is more of a tribal thing.  Tribes have little influence inside Fallujah because of how mixed up the population is.  They are all solidly against AQI though, because they want nothing to do with their extremist agenda and are appalled by the tactics AQI is using … I am sure that there are former insurgents in the police and neighborhood watch - which is why I tell my guys that we can never completely trust them - but we have not had a single instance where we took a known insurgent and turned him to our side.  We continue to target them heavily and most have either been detained, or fled the city.  The ones remaining spend a lot of time trying to keep from being detained instead of planning on how they will attack us.  We keep the pressure on them to keep them off balance and on the run.  That is having the best effect in the city.

Rather than this approach, the more classical approach of gated communities was used to partition the battle space and interdict insurgents.  Yet the use of former insurgents is still a strategy that is being employed in the Anbar Province.  Michael Yon observes that it is in use in Falahat.

The men of MiTT 8 are living along with their Iraqi protégées in filthy shipping containers on a highway. Several months ago they were attacked by a car bomb. But at about 0900, while I was traveling to their location with Marines in a Humvee (with sparkling glass) some Falahat villagers went to the new police station to report the presence of a culprit they knew to emplace bombs on the road.

It happened that quickly.

Within mere days of opening the station, people spoke up. The Iraqi Police (some of whom freely admitted to having been recent insurgents) called the tip into the Iraqi Army who were living with the Marines of MiTT 8 …

As we have observed before, the U.S. forces have tried to drive a wedge between the insurgents and the terrorists, a highly technical parsing of terms.  Reuters continues this reporting on the Diyala Province and the use of former insurgents.

U.S. forces have rebranded one of the main insurgent groups in Iraq and now use the term “concerned local nationals” to refer to a group that once claimed responsibility for killing scores of Americans.

The updated vocabulary for referring to the 1920 Revolution Brigade, described by a U.S. commander on Saturday, is a sign of the abrupt change in tactics that has seen U.S. forces cooperate with former Sunni Arab enemies.

The 1920 Revolution Brigade was one of the main anti-American Sunni Arab insurgent groups in Iraq in the years after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion and has claimed responsibility for killing scores of U.S. troops in ambushes and bomb attacks.

But for the past several months its members have cooperated with U.S. forces to help drive the strict al Qaeda Islamists out of Sunni Arab areas, part of a new U.S. tactic of cooperating with former Sunni Arab foes against al Qaeda.

Colonel David Sutherland, the U.S. commander in Diyala Province, said his men prefer not to call the group by its name.

“The 1920s as they’re called, we call them ‘the Baquba Guardians’, we call them the ‘concerned local nationals’,” he said. Baquba is the provincial capital.

“These are patriots who have come forward and have joined the security process. They are working with my soldiers and they are working with the Iraqi security forces,” he said.

Al Qaeda’s adherence to a hardline form of Sunni Islam and indiscriminate attacks has isolated it from Sunni Arabs and nationalist insurgent groups.

Sutherland said the 1920 Revolution Brigade name was now being used widely to refer to local pro-government militia and not anti-American insurgents. Some Shi’ite elders were asking if they too could recruit “1920s,” he said, a sign the Sunni Arab group’s name was no longer seen as sectarian.

“It has become a name, a catch-all phrase for these concerned local nationals throughout the province,” he told a news conference by video link to Baghdad.

His forces “do not deal with terrorists, and if we have information on individuals then we will act accordingly,” Sutherland said. “The individuals we are working with…. I have confidence in them and I have confidence in their leadership.”

One size doesn’t fit all in counterinsurgency.