In our local newspaper this weekend there was a book review on an account by a reporter on a unit of the US military in Iraq.
There is an overview of what is in the book then the reviewer comments on what he sees as two problems with the book. His comments show a lack of experience in the theatre of operations, the conditions & the systems the US military were using at the time.
The first is the reporter sides with as the reviewer puts it the grunts. I was a grunt(infantryman) in the NZ army & just what little is in the review I can actually envisage the poor leadership from above coupled with what I saw whilst working private security in Iraq over part of the period covered.
Actually some officers are that bad as is implied just as some grunts or NCO's are that bad. But from a leadership point of view it needs to start at the top.
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It was stated that one senior officer continually blamed the soldiers for any failure. Now it is human nature to blame someone else but having served under one officer who did that to an extreme it is easy to put myself in those soldiers position. This particular officer took it to the extreme that he reorganized his whole command structure of NCO's after a fail in an exercise assault. With the result been a retest no one knew each other & the retest was a shambles but we passed, which begged some questions itself.
Privately at that time it was communicated to me by two very senior Senior NCO's that they had never seen such poor leadership & the blaming of those who had actually shown some leadership & initiative.
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More importantly I saw first hand what happened in the US forces when an officer spoke up & used his initiative. He was removed from command & busted to the ranks within his old unit which is unusual & of course causes issues in itself.
The problem with a military like those of the US been so large, they tend to take the idea for initiative at lower levels away. In conventional warfare that can be an advantage but in the post invasion situation it is the NCO's, soldiers & platoon commanders who are the ones who make a difference.
Poor decisions & leadership higher up just make things worse at the lower levels.
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Not only that, even the Generals at the time who did have a good idea of what to do were hamstrung from early on due to the civilian running the day to day life of Iraq. They had little idea of what the soldiers on the ground were facing. Therefore they forced the Generals to carryout commands that put them off side with the locals & invited attack.
The second problem the reviewer highlights is the enemy.
Many of the reports we were receiving about the enemy(insurgents) were highly inaccurate or totally under estimated the enemy ability or resources.
As they rebuilt Iraq, the Iraqi reports were putting the insurgent numbers at over 40,000 at one stage from memory with support from 200,000 where as the US sources were putting insurgents at 5000. Sometime later the US claimed to have killed 15,000 insurgents. Which led to comments "so why are there still attacks since they have all died three times over."
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Good leadership though would of lowered the casualty rates of this unit where as bad leadership will lead to a greater casualty rate. No matter how good the enemy. Colonel William Malone showed that at Gallipoli in particular at Quinn's Post, but in everything he did until Chunuk Bair. Even then he gave his soldiers their best chance of surviving by refusing to attack when told too.
When reviewing something based on a real situation people need to be careful as there will be people who were there or in the area whom will know of the conditions on the ground.
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Tone of the book though follows the message that came out in television drama based on an embedded reporters view of a unit he was with & again similar with another book by an embedded reporter with a third unit both during the actual invasion.
At the time it seemed to be an endemic issue within the US military that they seem to have taken a good look at. But again been a large military that takes time to change.
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Where as a British unit deployed to the same area as highlighted in the book been reviewed, changed its tactics immediately after one incident & let it be known they were changing.
Leadership can be a tricky ability to exercise at the best of times. In a war zone any short comings can be shown up very quickly. I got to see the good & bad & how different nationalities use different methods that do not work for others.
The comments re problems just showed a lack of experience by the reviewer in particular in that theatre of operations.
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