Message to Petraeus: Clean-up on Aisle 5

by Charles

So far, there are initial signs of improvement in Baghdad. Getting soldiers out of forward operating bases (FOBs) and onto the streets appears to be beneficial. The NY Post:

What tactics are working? "We got down at the people level and are staying," he said flatly. "Once the people know we are going to be around, then all kinds of things start to happen."

More intelligence, for example. Where once tactical units were "scraping" for intelligence information, they now have "information overload," the general said. "After our guys are in the neighborhood for four or five days, the people realize they're not going to just leave them like we did in the past. Then they begin to come in with so much information on the enemy that we can't process it fast enough."

[...]

Petraeus has his troops applying a similar formula in Baghdad's Sadr City: "We're clearing it neighborhood by neighborhood." Troops move in - mainly U.S. soldiers and Marines supported by Iraqi forces, although that ratio is reversed in some areas - and stay. They are not transiting back to large, remote bases but are now living with the people they have come to protect. The results, Petraeus says, have been "dramatic."

"We're using 'soft knock' clearing procedures and bringing the locals in on our side," he notes. By being in the neighborhoods, getting to know the people and winning their trust, the soldiers have allowed the people to turn against the al Qaeda terrorists, whom they fear and loathe. Petraeus says his goal is to pull al Qaeda out "by its roots, wherever it tries to take hold."

Another change: an emphasis on protecting of gathering places like mosques and marketplaces. "We initiated Operation Safe Markets," Petraeus said, "and have placed ordinary concrete highway barriers around the vulnerable targets." Car bombings have dropped precipitately - the limited access thwarts them.

[...]

Are the policies paying off? "King David" as Petraeus is known from his previous tour of duty up near the Syrian border, is cautiously optimistic. "Less than half the al Qaeda leaders who were in Baghdad when this [surge] campaign began are still in the city," he said. "They have fled or are being killed or captured. We are attriting them at a fearsome rate."

There is some additional evidence of attriting. In The Blotter:

U.S. forces have arrested the two leaders of the network believed responsible for the brazen raid in Karbala by terrorists disguised as Americans, in which five U.S. soldiers were kidnapped and later killed in January, U.S. military officials said today.

In operations over the past several days in Basra and Hillah, coalition forces captured Qais Khazali, his brother Laith Khazali and several other members of the Khazali network, a splinter faction of the Mahdi army.

The Guardian is reporting that the al Sadr militias are splintering (they call it "ominous", but I say the opposite because the traitors of the Iraqi government are being separated from the larger group of Sadrists). West of Baghdad, Bill Roggio is reporting on the success of the Anbar Salvation Council and its confrontations against al Qaeda terrorists.

But Petraeus also noted that there's a long way to go. So what's not working so well? Two words: Information operations. According to the Counterinsurgency Manual (page 82), information operations is one of the five "overarching considerations in COIN operations:

• ▸ The commander and HN government together must select the logical lines of operations for attacking the insurgents’ strategy and focusing their effort to establish government legitimacy.
• ▸ The HN and COIN forces must establish control of one or more areas from which to operate. The HN forces must secure the people continuously within these areas.
• ▸ Operations should be initiated from the HN government’s areas of strength against areas under the insurgents’ control. The HN must regain control of the major population centers to achieve stability.
• ▸ Regaining control of insurgent areas requires the HN government to expand operations to secure and support the population. If the insurgency has established firm control of a region, its military apparatus there must be eliminated and its politico-administrative apparatus rooted out.
• ▸ Information operations must be aggressively employed to accomplish the following:
  • ▸ Favorably influence perceptions of HN legitimacy and capabilities.
  • ▸ Garner local, regional, and international support for COIN operations.
  • ▸ Publicize insurgent violence.
  • ▸ Discredit insurgent propaganda.

On page 88: "Though information operations (IO) is a separate strand in the coil of LLOs [Logical Lines of Operation], it is probably the most important, since it is interwoven throughout all the others and surrounds them."

Emphasis mine. So if IO is so important, why is the military--and at least one general--treating embedded journalists so abysmally? Michael Yon is doing hero's work in Iraq (along with Bill Roggio, Michael Fumento, Michael Totten (technically not an embed) and Bill Ardolino), reporting important information back to Americans and the rest of the Interweb, yet he's being treated like crap:

I have not left base in a good two weeks. This is unprecedented, given that sometimes I would run two or three missions per day, or at least try for five or six or seven per week. Trying to get living quarters and good communications is truly a waste of time. Only the richest or most determined news agencies dare come here for more than a brief stay. Most of the journalists seem to start cracking pretty quick anyway.

Generally it’s a huge waste of time and money to come here, and the hassle and risk to reward ratio is very bad. I’ve spent more than a year embedded in Iraq, and numerous times public affairs people have made snide remarks that journalists should be happy they get to eat “their chow” for free. Of course, they don’t mention that “their chow” belongs to American taxpayers, the same taxpayers they hurt when they squelch journalism from the war. Whether they do it directly, intentionally indirectly, or just by plain bungling the simplest stuff, like making sure writers have a surface to write on, whatever the case, I haven’t met anyone yet who knows how to write or hold a camera who comes to Iraq for free food. It’s really not fun here, next to impossible to do the job, and the food is nothing special. After all, we’re not talking about covering the French army.

The dining facilities are interesting and vastly different throughout the country. Some are rough and soldiers are lucky and happy to get sandwiches. But here in Baghdad the mess halls are like restaurants. Steak and crab once per week. All the major sodas, lots of cake and ice cream, complete with African guards out front. Most people can enter the dining facility without a problem, but at the dining facility near my tent, I get searched every time because I have a press ID. That’s a nice touch–wand the press before they eat. But I know first hand that it can get even more heavy-handed. One time, in 2005, after I wrote something they didn’t like (Proximity Delays), I needed a guard to eat.

[...]

But considering all the planning, organization, logistics and resources that went in to putting up what amounts to a food court in a surburban mall, how hard would it be, really, for there to be a clean, well-lit press trailer, open 24-7, with some desks, chairs and lockers, wired for the internet? Not on every base, but on enough of them so that stories from everywhere else could get out on a regular basis. For a military that is the first to gripe about not getting enough press–in a kind of war where the press can determine the outcome–it seems fairly obvious that the first step would be to at least make sure there is a place for the press to work. If this were a few months into this war, I could understand it, but to not even be at square one this far in?

A general emailed in the past 24 hours threatening to kick me out. The first time the Army threatened to kick me out was in late 2005, just after I published a dispatch called "Gates of Fire." Some of the senior level public affairs people who’d been upset by "Proximity Delays" were looking ever since for a reason to kick me out and they wanted to use "Gates of Fire" as a catapult. In the events described in that dispatch, I broke some rules by, for instance, firing a weapon during combat when some of our soldiers were fighting fairly close quarters and one was wounded and still under enemy fire. That’s right. I’m not sure what message the senior level public affairs people thought that would convey had they succeeded, (which they didn’t) but it was clear to me what they valued most. They want the press on a short leash, even at the expense of the life of a soldier.

Yon is calling these entries RUBS, which stands for Raw, Unedited and Barely Spell-checked. As far as I'm concerned, the more RUBS the better. Information ops doesn't just extend to the local populace, but to the rest of us. We need to know what's going at the ground level, and our military has overly choke-pointed the flow rather than opened it up. If IO is as important as the COIN manual says it is, then Petraeus needs to have a chat with a general or two, not to mention restructuring the Public Affairs Office so that the Yons and Roggios and others can help us win this Information War. They need to be unleashed, not muzzled and cast aside.

Comments

[plum]

It's so counter-productive that the military is treating Michael Yon — Michael Yon — so badly. He's been consistently pro-military and pro the Iraq war for the longest time. And, if your post is correct, then with surge appearing to be working, you'd think Yon would be their go-to guy to get the story out.

Just bizarre.

[Phil]

The US military has been fed a steady diet, for the last six years (and in some cases longer), of language to the effect that reporters are nothing but a bunch of al Qaeda-loving traitors. Is it any wonder, then, that they've started treating embeds "like crap," Charles?

[CharleyCarp]

I can think of plenty of good reasons why DOD wouldn't want embeds behaving as Yon did.

[Jackmormon]

Perhaps Information Operations refers to something other than journalism?

[Amos Newcombe]

If the Post is right, then Petraeus's surge strategy is having positive results (I'm not commenting here on Yon's or other journalists' situation), but it makes me uneasy that he is still referring to the insurgents as "al Qaeda". My understanding is that "al Qaeda in Mesopotamia" is a name picked for its PR value by a bunch of fellow travelers, but does not indicate any actual aid flowing in from Afghanistan and Pakistan, and that they are a small part of the insurgency anyway.

Is this not true? Is our Afghanistan adventure so spectacular a failure that such aid can flow across a hostile Iran? Or is this the new political correctness, that we have to brand all our enemies with this magic name? Or does Petraeus truly not know who his enemies are?

[Dan]

Did you actually expect the Military to allow for free journalism in a war zone? The same military that when their helicopters were blown up by insurgents called those crashes "technical malfunctions."

[J Thomas]

Journalists want to report the news. Military information operations are intended to tell people whatever will get them to support the military.

Two different goals, you have to expect some friction.

And consider -- a soldier who does something that hurts the mission can expect a courtmartial, even if he's supported the mission wholeheartedly every day for hundreds of days before. And an iraqi who's caught doing something that hurts the mission will be killed or detained. A journalist who hurts the mission might get sent home or harrassed a little in the cafeteria. Pretty mild stuff when you think about it.

If a journalist wants to get cooperation from the US military he can report everything in the best possible light -- every single time. If he ever once reports something that makes the military look less than its best, then he isn't on the team.

[J Thomas]

Or is this the new political correctness, that we have to brand all our enemies with this magic name? Or does Petraeus truly not know who his enemies are?

The former. Lots of people are opposed to al qaeda, here and in iraq. Being against al qaeda is like being against international bolshevism.

[glasnost]

Whether or not DoD lets military bloggers work or not is fairly trivial to the outcome.

[glasnost]

Positive assertions and anecdotes are a dime a dozen (so are negative ones, of course)

I'll wait for March stats.

(Not that all of those are always trustworthy, either, but what the hey, can't control evrathing)

[Bob Owens]

The General who wants to silence Yon is Brigadier General Vincent K. Brooks.

In 2005, Brooks was the the lead Public Affairs Officer (PAO) for the United States Army. The stories that got Yon in trouble with Brooks were Proximity Delays and Gates of Fire. Proximity Delays got Yon in trouble, and in Gates of Fire, Yon picked up a rifle and joined combat to help LTC Erik Kurilla, who had been shot three times by an insurgent while CSM Robert Prosser was engaged in hand-to-hand combat with another insurgent. For inserting himself into battle (which violated embed rules) to help fallen American soldiers, and then having the gall to write about it, Brooks tried to kick Yon our of Iraq.

Brooks is back in Iraq, this time as deputy commanding general - support for Multinational Division-Baghdad, and he still obviously carries his grudge against Yon. I confirmed last night with Michael Yon that it is this same General Vincent K. Brooks that sent Yon the email threatening to kick him out of Iraq.

[Ugh]

The Bizarro World version.

[Jay C]

Good link, Ugh: I especially liked this bit:

We see the same today with nominally American media outlets interviewing and giving air time to al Qaeda and insurgents under the guise of "equal time" like there was actually two valid points of view and ignoring the beheadings and car bombs.

I really wonder what "media" streiff has been watching of late: Al-Awraa? Maybe it's a matter of sticking to "mainstream" media, but I have seen really little (as in: none) "airtime" devoted to al-Qaeda, outside the occasional review (as in: dismissal) of the intermittent videos they release - not many thumbs-up there. Bizarro World, indeed.

[john miller]

This is a mixed bag. I do think Petraeus' approach is solid and is undoubtedly having results. The biggest element is earning the trust of the citizens, which has always been a major thrust of his.

What we don't know is what happens down the road when we do withdraw from these areas (which we will have to eventually). I really don't think Americans have a good understanding of the different conception of time that we have and people in the Middle East and Asia have.

Nor do we have a real understanding of the depths of animosity that exists between some of the groups there.

Plus, although Baghdad is a little quieter, there is an increase in violence away from Baghdad.

A key element of this whole plan will be to what degree we and the Iraqi governmental forces can wrest support away from al Sadr, and that will involve a lot more than just maintiaining a force presence. We allowed al Sadr to get as much influence as we did by not acting quick enough to get services, economic support and other infrastructure in place. He worked to do so. The people in Sadr city felt that he cared and the Americans didn't. If they can be convinced we care, then an impact can be made. If we can't, nothing else matters.

[Eric Martin]

Slightly off topic but this has been nagging me for a while...:

West of Baghdad, Bill Roggio is reporting on the success of the Anbar Salvation Council and its confrontations against al Qaeda terrorists.

Is it me, or is Roggio always reporting on the success of this or that effort in Iraq? I know that he's an intelligent guy, and many people that I respect laud his analytical skills and breadth of knowledge. He is a frequently cited source of information and insight. But I have one large overriding problem with his analysis:

If the situation in Iraq had really been going as well as Roggio has been claiming for so many years, why is the situation still so FUBAR?

It just seems that there is a steady cheerleading slant that tends to taint his analysis to the point that it is difficult to take him at face value.

Am I misreading him?

[Donald Johnson]

The poll I'll link to below (last time I did this the whole post from that point on was a link, so I'll wait until the end) paints a fairly pessimistic picture of Iraq. Of course it's two weeks old and things could have totally turned around, maybe with people rising from the dead and so on. The poll was criticized by some on the right for oversampling Sunnis--assuming that the poll analysts didn't weight their data accordingly to correct for this, it's still no big deal because the responses are broken down according to sect, so you can see for yourself what the Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds think.

Note that one out of 6 households reports someone "harmed" (22 percent for Sunnis, 17 percent for Shiites and 7 percent for Kurds.) Asked about the sorts of violence they'd seen, more Iraqis had seen unnecessary violence against citizens committed by US or coalition forces than by any other faction. (They don't compare the severity of the violence.) Car bombs and suicide attacks got the highest vote in the category of things Iraqis feared most (38 percent), with unnecessary violence by coalition forces coming in second at 16 percent, and then various forms of Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence picking up the rest.

Here's the link

[moe99]

Well, this IS good news and just in time. Now we can turn our attention to Iran!
/snark

[togolosh]

Charles - you seem to be viewing IO as being about informing the US public about what's going on, but that's simply not what it's about. The target for IO has to be Iraqis. I'd much rather see a total media blackout accompanied by effective IO operations undermining support for insurgents than total information access for western journalists with useless or counterproductive IO aimed at Iraqis. Obviously those are two extremes, but hopefully they illuminate my point.

Effective COIN IO would put most of its efforts on reaching the Arab press. No matter how good the reporter, articles in the NYT or WaPo will have minimal impact on the Arab street.

[spartikus]

you seem to be viewing IO as being about informing the US public about what's going on

But winning the Home Front is half the battle.

[freelunch]

Whether or not DoD lets military bloggers work or not is fairly trivial to the outcome.

Sometimes it takes publicity to shame the White House and Pentagon into doing what they said they were doing in Iraq.

[Donald Johnson]

"Charles - you seem to be viewing IO as being about informing the US public about what's going on, but that's simply not what it's about. The target for IO has to be Iraqis. I'd much rather see a total media blackout accompanied by effective IO operations undermining support for insurgents than total information access for western journalists with useless or counterproductive IO aimed at Iraqis. Obviously those are two extremes, but hopefully they illuminate my point."

I'd rather everyone just know what's happening. The whole idea of an information war is Orwellian.

[Charles Bird]

you seem to be viewing IO as being about informing the US public about what's going on, but that's simply not what it's about.

It's much more than that, tog. I've got an update in the hopper.

[Anderson]

CharleyCarp's comment seems not to've been picked up on ... Yon writes:

I broke some rules by, for instance, firing a weapon during combat when some of our soldiers were fighting fairly close quarters and one was wounded and still under enemy fire.

What other "rules" did Yon break? And does the military have to let embedded reporters play soldier?

Anyone recall how we lefties flipped out over Judy Miller wearing fatigues?

[dmbeaster]

The problem with evaluating the surge is the same problem overall with this war -- what does "the surge is working" allegedly mean?

If the yardstick is that it lessens violence in the affected neighborhoods, that is fairly obvious and a rather poor definition for "it is working."

"Working" would be that political stability takes hold because violence has been brought under control. Well, violence has not been brought under control -- only lessened slightly, and there is no indication whatsoever that the surge is bringing political stability.

Is this an uptick or simply a temporary lessening in the rate of descent? I don't know, but I am extremely tired of war apologists pretending that they do know.

Iraq for the next ten years is going to look as lot more like Somalia than anything else. The surge cannot alter that reality on the ground -- only slightly lessen its ill effects at a cost to the US that does not match the benefit.

How many years should we keep surging to see if it works? ... Two? ... Five? ... Ten? The history of this war so far is that it is never-ending because so long as the glass had not gone completely dry for a long period of time, we should allegedly keep at it.

[spartikus]

How many years should we keep surging to see if it works?

I believe CB is on record as giving it until summer.

[togolosh]

The impression I get of the US approach to the press in Iraq is that the press are viewed as an unavoidable inconvenience. Additionally, press organs that are slanted against the US, such as Al Jazeera, are viewed as cooperating with the enemy. Unfortunately the exact press outlets most effective at reaching the Arab street are the likes of Al Jazeera. A with-us-or-against-us approach cuts off access to very effective channels for getting the US message to the people who most need to hear it.

[dmbeaster]

I believe CB is on record as giving it until summer.

I think his position is a little bit ambiguous on that, but my remark was not a challenge to his specific position. It was directed at the general logic of surge supporters in general, and Charles support seems guarded rather than enthusiastic in view of the history of misconduct by the Bush administration in prosecuting the war.

Politically, it has served as yet another device for putting off into the future a decision about what is to be done, and will be milked for that purpose so long as Bush remains President. It presents no realistic possibility of improving the situation, as even its Pentagon proponents acknowledge (they emphasize correctly all of the political and reconstruction changes that needs to accompany it for there to be any success, which is the real point). It is the lessening of violence coupled with political progress that would have a chance of improving things. A temporary lessening of violence in response to a greater troop presence by itself means very little.

But so long as any tiny glimmer of good can be linked to the surge, then it allegedly is "working" and should be continued indefinitely (hence my snark about how many years to let it run). I think that sums up the political logic behind this activity.

[spartikus]

I think his position is a little bit ambiguous on that, but my remark was not a challenge to his specific position.

I'm in complete agreement with the gist of your point, but CB has mentioned an actual date he will, er...excuse..."may" move into the "defeatist" camp (and with apologies, it's November, not summer):

If we've made no discernible progress by this November, I may just put myself in the defeatist camp and call for a phased drawdown. But not now, and not with this plan.

Yes, he's left himself alot of outs, but I think it's important to note, and remember, this.

[Charles Bird]

I believe CB is on record as giving it until summer.

Nah. I initially said by November of this year and then extended it to year-end for seeing concrete, discernible progress. Instead of an update, I posted Part II.

[OCSteve]

dmbeaster: Iraq for the next ten years is going to look as lot more like Somalia than anything else.

That, unfortunately, may be the most concise and prescient comment I have read on the issue. Kudos to you for writing it, and dread to those of us who supported this.